A Little Bit About…Time

A Little Bit About: Time

I know it’s such a cliché, but time really does fly by doesn’t it? As much as lockdown is taking its toll on everyone, I can’t help but feel that time is passing fairly quickly. I last left my friends and colleagues in the office when it was the beginning of March. Suddenly it’s the end of May. How did that happen?

Back in 2016, I had a work trip abroad for 3 days with non-stop meetings. It was great, and very productive, but it left me with a ton of follow up work to do and an accumulation of emails to deal with. So on the plane home I got my laptop out to do some work. I had an important presentation due in the next day and wanted to use my time effectively, instead of wasting 3 hours watching Netflix or listening to Spotify. In the seat next to me there was a young mum, probably the same age as me, with a one-year-old baby sitting on her lap. I made some brief small talk with her as the flight was taking off. The baby, naturally, was wriggling about, arms flailing all flight long. I constantly reassured the mum that the baby was simply doing what babies do best: playing. Until…

Right as the air steward made the announcement that we were approaching landing and so all electronic devices had to be stowed away (side note, do we EVER use the word stowed in any other context?), I was about to save and shut down my laptop when the baby slammed her cute, chubby little hand down on the keyboard, coincidentally (and soul destroying-ly) holding down the delete button. It was ALL gone. All of it. I genuinely thought things like that only happened in cartoons, not real life! Now I’m starting to realise that maybe all of these things have happened to me to give me good blog content….

Anyway, what does this story have to do with time flying in (apologies, that was a looooong tangent)? Well now fast forward to Christmas time 2019 and I was boarding my flight home to Scotland, when in the row in front of me was the very same young mum and the baby who was now FOUR YEARS OLD! This time the woman’s husband was with them and they had another new born baby. I remember that like it was yesterday (clearly traumatised having to re-do 3 hours of work later on that night) yet three whole years had passed.

I was actually talking to a really close friend of mine recently about this, and we got to talking about what our lives might look like in 3 years’ time, because if we look back 3 years, we never would have guessed we’d be where we are. Back then I was travelling back and forth between Spain and Scotland, practically living out of a suitcase, trying to keep on top of work, my personal life and a whole lot of packing and unpacking. Yet 3 years down the line I now live in Spain and it feels like a lifetime ago I was travelling back and forth. Where will I be in another 3 years? Hopefully not still in lockdown at least…

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