I used to have all the time in the world. Five years ago (almost six now!) when I first moved to Japan life was slow-paced. I didn't have a lot of specific things that I wanted to do, and the things that I had to do were not many either. Starting a new job, I was slowly getting assigned new tasks, and I had plenty of time to finish them before the deadlines. In private I occasionally went out with friends, but never that much. I was a lot less interested in traveling then, or in having a social life. In fact, I was a lot less interested in everything, so I didn't really care if time passed quickly or slowly.
That all changed, of course, during that first year. I started to enjoy all those things that take up a lot of time (and money). Yet I didn't really feel the pressure of time that much. Despite having a full-time job that sucked up all of my time I was enjoying life in the best way I could imagine. And it's thanks to that full-time job that I can now spend my time on other things. Despite the fact that I now have all the time in the world available to me, I still don't have enough. I want more time. I need more time to do the things that I like. I have so many programming projects to work on, so many tv shows, movies, anime, books and comics to experience. So many places I want to travel to. So many bicycle adventures I want to do. For the last two items I am limited in money as well as in time, but time is indeed a deciding factor.
Whenever I start programming something I'm always surprised at how much time it takes. It's extremely frustrating if you've already thought out the problem in your head and figured out exactly how to solve it, but then it still takes hours of coding to translate the thing that's in your head onto the computer. There is a hard limit on how many things you can create in software every hour/day/week/month. If I spent all my available time programming as fast as I could, whenever I could, I still would need years to finish all the projects I enjoy working on. The same goes for media. I enjoyed watching 3 seasons of Lost in the last two weeks, but that's approaching the crazy point. I did try to multitask by watching two episodes at the same time, but I still can't quite do that. (Except if the two shows I'm watching are both boring. Watching Naruto fillers and Bleach fillers at the same time is quite possible, yet still a waste of time. a double waste of time, even).
I'm wondering why I suddenly feel that I don't have enough time. It seems that, the more time you have, the more you want. Much like money, I guess. I don't think it's because I feel that the things I want to do are very important to me. Four years ago I used to think that the things I did were important to me, but not any more. I think right now my attitude is very much "I don't care too much about anything", so why do I hold time so important?
Sometimes I think about what I would do if I had more time. For example, if my brain could work four times faster, or if I had access to a time machine that would slow down time just for me. If the days were four times longer I could spend more time on coding, more time watching tv shows, more time learning math and then still have enough time left to read a good book. Wouldn't it be cool if the human brain could work at twice the speed? Perhaps this century we can.
The feeling is mostly psychological. If I didn't have this biological time bomb of a body then I wouldn't have to worry (hurry) so much about how I spend my time. But the body ages, slowly according to some, rapidly according to me. And we must do all that we can with it before it dies. But perhaps science can do something about that too.