Blog Entry year 2008, um I mean 2009. How time flies these days. Can’t seem to get it off my mind how the days and weeks go by so quickly of late. This obsessive attention-paying began early last year when I started up my own start-up. After working full-time for 10 years at a small software company I decided to start my own biz (www.dynamicwebcreations.com) [sorry, web site still not translated to English]. After long deliberations and even longer walks through the winter forest behind my house, I came to the conclusion that I would keep my old job and start a new company at the same time. By boss wasn’t too crazy about this because I was the only project manager left in the company after a recent process of voluntary and in-voluntary downsizing. There wasn’t much stopping me at that point and so I’ve been working at home a few hours a week trying to get my little firm up and going and at the same time working my buns off for Welsch & Partner.
It’s not the work load or extra stress that I’ve been mostly bugged by. Rather it’s gotten annoying how I keep noticing how Thursday has arrived before Monday is even done with. Recently a friend said that I should try to do “new” or “different” things each day to prevent this time racing thing. That reminds me of the advice another friend gave me at least 15 years ago. He had just finished his training in speech therapy so probably got the idea from some seminar. “Try to do things in an opposite fashion than usual”, he said to me in German. I think it sounded more profound in the original voice. After 15 years I haven’t forgotten so it must have been important. He said if you always tear the toilet paper off the roll with your right hand, try it with your left. If you always put your left leg in your pants first, try putting your right leg in first. I must admit, unfortunately, that I didn’t even follow his advice back then. Perhaps that’s my problem. The second friend’s advice, however, did influence my behavioral patterns; at least a few times. I’m not sure if it helps, but I would say it’s worth a try.
Walking through the woods on a snowy morning, listing to Bob McChesney on WILL-FM radio interviewing Naomi Klein, running up and down the court in a heating soccer match trying to make the perfect pass or shoot the perfect goal, discussing ethics and morality with my 18-year old - those are all things that, I do believe, I enjoy and help prevent time from racing away from me. Perhaps it’s simply an attitude thing. If I wouldn’t get so hung up on the fact that the weeks go by so quickly, they probably wouldn’t. My wife Susa says, “Great, the week is already over. Then the weekend is here and we can take a trip somewhere.” She does sense that days go by quickly but it doesn’t seem to bother her a bit.
I guess it’s also the feeling that my life is just passing by too quickly and before I know it I’ll be this 80 year old fart telling my grandchildren to enjoy life before it passes you by. That’s exactly what my grandmother told me. She was anything but an old fart I must say. She was a gentle, kind, loving women who outlived her husband by a few years and was lucky enough to have my mother nearby to visit her every day. We grandkids, my father and my mother’s sister also visited her regularly. Her deep, clear voice, still slightly tainted by 60 year old Polish roots, would repeat the same handful of anecdotes at the end of our short visits. “Take advantage of each day”, she said, “for life is so short. Enjoy while you are still young.” She was always either standing or sitting at her desk chair, as if sitting in one the soft-cushioned sofa or recliner chairs would cause her short, thin body to sink into oblivion. She had beautiful thick, gray hair, collected in gentle curls. I think she had the same hairdo all the years I knew her. One of the outstanding events in her routine was going with my mother to a particular hairdresser in neighborhood shopping center. Damned if I can’t remember the name of the woman who did her hair.
Those simple few words of hers about enjoying life are buzzing around my head today. Here I am half way through my life. Back then I was at the beginning of my life, she was at the end of hers. What significance did her words have for her? She had lived so long and seen so much. As with many elderly people, she was suffering from a mild sort of dementia with which childhood memories become very pronounced and memories of recent years become weaker. She spoke often of her childhood. A memory made all the more pronounced because of the tragedy and pain she must have gone through. She was born in Poland and emigrated to America at the age of 19 with her mother and two sisters. The father stayed in Poland.
I know little of her childhood aside from the few stories she repeatedly told us. I wonder now why she always repeated the same three or four stories and never told us much more about her past. Perhaps because we didn’t ask. Looking at my own experience I can imagine how pronounced those memories must have been. I, too, emigrated to a foreign country at the age of 19. Amazing, this correlation just struck me while writing this. My emigration was, of course, very different from hers. I left modern, freeway-infatuated California and moved to autobahn-infatuated German. I had a German girlfriend to guide me. My grandmother moved from war-torn Poland to Motor City, Michigan. Her life in America saw the country move from the Great Depression to the Great Compression and on to the Great Society. She witnessed the historic rise of an affluent middle-class America and she and her family were the right archetype rising immigrants. The fact that they were Catholic may have dampened their rise. Along with their language, she, her mother and sisters partially gave up their religion to become real Americans. I remember her telling me (before her dementia), that as a young family in Detroit their greatest dream was to become Americans.
How funny. How different. While I too left my homeland at the age of 19, I did not take my family with me. They all stayed there. My umbilical cord to home was not as strongly severed as that of my grandmothers. I didn’t even “emigrate” to Germany back then. I just was going to do a year abroad, see Europe and have fun with my girlfriend. As things often go, girlfriends that stay girlfriends tend to become more than just girlfriends. Before I knew it she wasn’t just a lover, she was a lover with some individual being growing inside of her.
My emigration was more of prolonged visit for the first years. Although I’ve never done it before (perhaps I could try some day), emigrating to America must be very different than emigrating to Germany. Here (I’m in Deutschland) becoming “German” is next to impossible for immigrants. I, actually, don’t even want to become one. I don’t know why but I still, after 20 years in this country, I still consider myself American. I have a German wife, three German kids, two of which have German and American passports. I am happy here and want to stay here but the integration is different. My grandmother wanted from day one to become a true American and she succeeded in that.
What does this all have to do with my present issue of time perception. I dunno. I just read in the paper that the US is sending telescope into orbit called “Keppler” (a German scientist by the way). They hope to find life on another planet. Maybe one of those German scientists (a bit of pride in German’s history even flows through me) has my answer. It was, I believe, Einstein (yes, he was German, in fact a Swabian born in the same town my wife was) who figured if you you traveled far enough into outer space and then came back to Earth you would be somewhat younger than your twin brother. I don’t know, however, if he also realized you’ld be dead because the human body can’t put up with all the cosmic radiation out there. Hm, guess I’ll just have to go with my grandma’s advice and try to enjoy each and every day.
ciao,
Gus
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