The shape of a decade

When you're young, time feels like a corridor — one room after another, each the same size, all leading forward. Somewhere in the middle of life that changes. The corridor starts to bend.

You notice it first in small ways. A song from twenty years ago feels closer than something from last spring. A decade collapses into a single mood, while a single hard month stretches out like its own era.

Why the years fold

Part of it is just novelty. When everything is new, the brain lays down dense, detailed memories, and dense memories feel long. As the years repeat themselves — same commute, same seasons — there's less to record, and the tape runs faster.

The lesson I take from this isn't gloomy. It's practical: if you want a year to feel long, fill it with first times. New places, new skills, new people. Novelty is the closest thing we have to stretching time.

We don't remember days, we remember moments.

I'm trying to collect more of them.