Time

Friday July 18, 2025

Feel like I’m at the age where I need a watch.

There’s never any more or any less of it.

I don’t agree that life is short. When I think about my life, usually in the shower or in the impatient, closed-eye moments when I’m awaiting the numbness of sleep, I often feel nostalgia. That in itself makes me appreciate just how long life is. I’m not even halfway through my life (knock on wood), and there are distinct periods for which I feel a yearning appreciation. Our friend Andy Keller visited this week, and we spent a solid 20 minutes just naming restaurants and bars we loved in LA, lamenting the ones that have changed or closed since the true Golden Year of 2016. I could do this with a half dozen groups of people for twice as many little epochs of life. I imagine you can, too.

Life is a long chronological index, with chapters and pages and paragraphs and sentences that you sense are being written by somebody you know, who may or may not actually be you.

I think our perpetual quest for control over our lives—or at least the illusion of it—is one of the big reasons why time is such a matter of perspective. Time flies when you’re out of control, just trying to keep up, or, more cruelly, when you’re having so much fun you don’t care about the relentlessly diminishing quantity that remains. When you’re in control, it seems to drag.

Take, for instance, right now. Our friends Lani and Garrett Lincoln had their first child, Isaac (aka Ziggy), about two months ago. Lindsay and I have about two months to go until our son arrives. There will be about four months between them, and in ten years, we’ll talk about how close they are in age and be shocked it’s Potato’s birthday when we just celebrated Ziggy’s. Right now, it feels like an eternity, I think in large part because we’ve (particularly Lindsay) been doing so much over the past seven months to prepare for his arrival. The first trimester flew by as I decided to get a real job, and we basked in the excitement and attention of telling everybody we were expecting. Since then, it’s kind of dragged because we’ve been on top of things. Nine weeks feels like a really long time. I know you’re going to say it will fly by. I’m telling you it will not.

Time is perspective.

Take, for instance, little Linds Hoffman, who is heading to New Zealand next week after looking for a job for the last year. I imagine shit dragged for her, even as she was gallivanting around Europe, because the thing she wanted to happen most simply wasn’t happening. The timeline in front of her was simply… space. But then she got the job, was told to arrive in three weeks, and now she’s squeezing in visits to everyone she can while preparing to move to the other side of the world, and probably feels a bit like a headless chicken with a very clear sense of direction but absolutely no ability to get there calmly.

Time is choice.

Take, for instance, my Grandpa’s perspective on time. He’s in his 90s and has seen and learned more shit than I’ve forgotten. I wonder if he’s reading this thinking about a blink of an eye or a timeless river. I keep meaning to call because I want movie recommendations for when the baby comes along, and he’s full of them.

Time is distance.

These damn kids today. The internet is more than 40 years old, but it’s really not even 30 for consumers, and it’s still savaged vulnerable young people who grew up in a world in which it was a necessity, not a privilege. I mean, we as parents have done literal harm to their brains and social acuity by thrusting our iPad and ChatGPT crutches upon them before they’ve ever had a chance to learn any sense of productive struggle. Their sense of time is a TikTok video; Lindsay’s 4th graders are sneaking iPads into school because their only method of emotional self-regulation is a screen. (But social emotional learning is a problem, I keep hearing.) Every generation seems to loathe every other one, and there are probably grains of truth in each wave of hate. (And absolute truth that Reagan-era Boomers permanently and intentionally screwed this country and everyone born after 1984 for their own selfish gains.) But Gens Z and Alpha might be the first that really don’t deserve the hate they get from us because we created this monster out of our aversion to taking the time to live right.

Time is change.

Erica Nichols was staying with us this week, and we really didn’t do much. She hung out, worked, and helped Lindsay with some projects to get prepared for the baby. It fucking flew by. You know what they say about time and fun.

One Quote: “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” - Cormac McCarthy

I haven’t done a quote in a bit, so I was looking for some inspiration and came across this one from All the Pretty Horses (a great book if you’ve never read it). It made me start screaming Papa Roach, so I figured it was worth picking. Reference, if needed:

One Book: “Dark Matter” by Blake Crouch

I haven’t read this, but Lindsay just finished it and said it was good. It has something to do with multiple timelines, so very apropo. Guess it’s a show now, too?

One Hollywood: Sinners

Last week was a cop out since we were traveling and I was so swamped that I just forgot about AHN, but seriously: If you haven’t seen Sinners… It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s technically astounding (Michael B. Jordan passing a cigar back and forth between himself is such a first-act flex, this movie knows how good it is from the jump). The characters are deep, compelling, and tragic in multiple dimensions. It’s a vampire movie that’s so firmly rooted in historicity and folk tale that the themes resonate as national trauma rather than Twilight control bullshit. Nuances of good and evil, futility of resistance, personal vs. tribal autonomy… THE MUSIC… this movie is entertaining as hell, and so incredibly thought-provoking. Truly the best of what movies should be.

One Song: The Beatles - The Long and Winding Road

Something in my brain tells me my dad hates this song. It’s not one of my favorite Beatles songs, but when I was thinking of music for this one, I thought it was funny that I have some sense of someone else’s aversion to a song rather than my own. Time beats the hell out of memories; he might love it. (I’m pretty sure I was right the first time, though.)

I mean, my memory is so bad I forget how I got from one side of the house to the other. I routinely can’t remember how to get to places I’ve been hundreds of times before, to the point that Lindsay has to correct me in the car when I start driving in the opposite direction.

(One More Song: Connie Francis - Pretty Little Baby)

This 1962 hit has been all over TikTok for the past months. Francis was a massively successful singer whose great-grandchildren are probably already taken care of, but it’s cool she got to go out at the top of a whole new medium after a 60-year career.

One Art: The Three Ages of Man by Giorgione

I have nothing to add to that.