Dates
Part of my job is to double check dates in the letters we send out. It's one of the vital things I can't skip (unlike most of my editing that, in a time crunch, can get shoved to the side) because the date of the letter sets all the due dates of the required responses. So most days I spend a while staring at dates.
Like most things you stare at for too long, sometimes the dates stop making sense. I have miscorrected and then recorrected dates to ten years ago and to the future on rare occasions. I sometimes find myself staring at today's date and thinking, "Wait, that can't be right." When did it get this far along in this century? The Y2K scare was over 15 years ago. I graduated from university last century. Last century. Children born when I graduated from high school are completing university themselves now. None of this seems the slightest bit real.
I started this journal 14 years ago. I joined communities and friended people who have disappeared (and some that haven't). I wrote a lot more back then, everyone wrote a lot more back in LiveJournal's heyday. I lived in a different country. I was in my mid-twenties and now I'm right up on the big four-oh. I went from crushing on unattainable Japanese musicians to being married. I've had a plethora of middling jobs. I have rolled through more fandoms than any of my lovely readers can fathom since 1) I rarely write here and 2) I try not to fangirl on here after my first few years of utter silliness.
I know time has passed. I can even tell you some of the things I did with it. I don't even regret a lot of it. Still, 2017? Really? Really?
Like most things you stare at for too long, sometimes the dates stop making sense. I have miscorrected and then recorrected dates to ten years ago and to the future on rare occasions. I sometimes find myself staring at today's date and thinking, "Wait, that can't be right." When did it get this far along in this century? The Y2K scare was over 15 years ago. I graduated from university last century. Last century. Children born when I graduated from high school are completing university themselves now. None of this seems the slightest bit real.
I started this journal 14 years ago. I joined communities and friended people who have disappeared (and some that haven't). I wrote a lot more back then, everyone wrote a lot more back in LiveJournal's heyday. I lived in a different country. I was in my mid-twenties and now I'm right up on the big four-oh. I went from crushing on unattainable Japanese musicians to being married. I've had a plethora of middling jobs. I have rolled through more fandoms than any of my lovely readers can fathom since 1) I rarely write here and 2) I try not to fangirl on here after my first few years of utter silliness.
I know time has passed. I can even tell you some of the things I did with it. I don't even regret a lot of it. Still, 2017? Really? Really?