Since having a baby, there’s a conversation people love to have with me, and it goes something like this: Wow, isn’t time flying by? How is she so big? Where has the time gone?! Doesn’t it seem like just yesterday that she was born? Soon she’ll be one! I’m sure even if you haven’t recently had a baby you regularly have a version of this conversation, so you’ll know that the socially-acceptable response is: Yes! I know! Time IS flying by! It seems like the last few months have gone by in the blink of an eye! Can you believe it’s already October? Two years ago, however, I declared a moratorium on this kind of talk, and I’ve stuck to it ever since. I purposefully try not to let the passing of time be a topic of conversation, especially in reference to its speed. I just refuse to let that be the way I see my life. It’s more than that, though. It’s not just that I refuse to admit that time is whizzing by; it’s that I really don’t feel like it is. January 7 feels just about exactly as far away as it should at this point, no more, no less. And the trick to that, I think, is something I learned from a very random Art of Manliness article I somehow stumbled on a few years ago. The article is absolutely worth reading in full, but here were my biggest a-has: Number one: Because our perception of time is intricately tied up with our emotions and memories, our minds filter the info before presenting it to us. When confronted with a scary or novel experience, our brains go into overdrive, recording much more detail than normal. Because the brain lays down such rich, dense memories of those