# What it feels like to be enthusiastically time blind

### *And I rail against points no one actually made*

I seem to be time blind and I like it. From my point of view most people are obsessed with how long something takes instead of how interesting it is. Why in the holy hell would you want to sit around with nothing happening? And why in the flying fuck would you interrupt yourself doing something interesting just cause time has passed?

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I agree time is an amazing coordination and planning tool. I tend to be on time. Actually, I tend to be *early*, cause being early requires almost no time tracking at all while you get all the benefits of being a good coordinator. You just arrive long before you need to be there and then zone out. Where zoning out is basically letting go of this finicky annoying time-thingy so we can once again focus on what matters: interesting things.

My problem is that I wish *more* people were timeblind. I am pretty lost on why people consider me to be the one with the “disability”. Have you considered *not* waiting and hanging around doing nothing? Have you considered instead, just … doing stuff cause waiting is fucking torture and your life is ticking away every second and why are we sitting here with nothing going on?

Yeah, I was a blast in meditation class.

But seriously. I don’t get it. When I’m in a group, and a problem needs solving, I tend to be the first one to jump up and do it cause well … what else are you supposed to do? I love it when someone else beats me to the punch. People who are faster than me are so *relaxing.*

But it’s not just in groups. Basically in any situation, have you considered just not waiting? How about not being patient at all? There are a lot of seconds, minutes, and hours that people spend doing nothing. Consider the benefits of getting *annoyed* that your life is ticking by with no obvious reward. Instead you could be reading, cleaning, exercising, or daydreaming.

But you want to know the irony? Most of the people I get along with are actually really patient. They don’t mind silences, they don’t mind delays, they don’t mind things going slowly.

I hate it. Which is great. They can do that patience thing while I poke a shiny light.

Except when I don’t, cause timeblindness goes both ways: When nothing is happening I want things to go *faster*, but when stuff gets interesting I want the whole world to stop. Please don’t talk to me when I’m reading. Please don’t interrupt me when I’m typing. Please don’t expect me to stop binging this great book, show, game, or work project that is the glorious ambrosia I want to suck on all day.

I tend to say I crave behavioral addictions. I don’t recommend it. Not cause it’s bad for me, but because it’s probably bad for you. I seem to have gotten a lucky roll on the addiction-trait-chart. See I’m too impatient to press the button of Unreliable Reward. You can’t lootbox me or slot machine me. The distance between the cookies is too astronomical. I’d be thoroughly annoyed before you can string me along. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Instead I want a game addiction, a twitter addiction, or a media addiction. Cause whenever I get one, I get to live in the glorious place where my entire existence is tiled in the One Interesting Thing, and my mind is synthesizing every possible connection together from every angle, and time is a lieeeee.

Don’t ask me to stop. Don’t ask me to eat. Don’t ask me to sleep or drink.

Actually, please do.

You are probably one of those patient people, who noticed it’s 2 hours past dinner time, and if you like me, you might shove a plate of food under my door. I love you <3

I’ve gotten addicted to facebook, to gaming, to work. Each time I forget whatever else I’m doing, and then try to remember to eat and sleep, while just drowning myself in cool things spawning more cool things.

Don’t make me wait for that.

Cause I don’t care about time. I care about reward signals. Patience is learning to cope with a problem I’d rather solve instead: If there is nothing interesting going on, please just let me *make* it interesting.

I do agree it’s hard sometimes. Till this year, I’d get angry if my partner said he’d be back in 5 minutes and then was back in 5 actual minutes. I know that sounds deranged. What actually happens is that I don’t look at a clock, don’t have anything to do in those 5 minutes, and every second expands into an additional 10 seconds. If no one actually sets a timer, I become convinced 20 minutes or more have passed.

Compare that to playing a fun game or reading a good book, and every second somehow shrinks to only a fraction of itself. You blink and all the time is gone.

Getting time imposed over interest is maddening to me. I become viscerally angry. There are ways to not. Those include nothing like the advice I’ve gotten. I don’t want to “ground myself on sensory stimuli”. Those are *slow* and just emphasize we are simply sitting here dying at a speed of 10 seconds per second.

I also don’t want to breathe. Breathing is done automatically. Are you being serious, you want me to spend my attention and time on manually steering my body functions while I could \[wildly waves hands\] be doing something interesting?

I get that I could wirehead myself into being ok with nothingness. I’m sort of a fan of agnostic buddhism on some level, cause they are cool about being nice about your feelings and your mind. But there is a limit somewhere between functioning ok in life and actually pursuing things you love.

It has helped me to *know* I’m time blind though. I only discovered it two years ago. For the last year, I’ve set a literal timer when someone says they will be back in a few minutes. It saves us both a bunch of grief. If someone speaks slowly, I either start counting in my head or start poking things around me.

Wow, Shoshannah, that sure sounds like ADHD.

Yeah, sure. If I take ritalin I can see time just fine. But it isn’t actually better in most ways. Less happens. There are fewer connections. Less pressure. Less drive. And I like to be driven. Just let me be time blind. I’ll try to keep things interesting for us. And if you have a minute, maybe push a plate of food under my door.

Hi <3