< no subject >

This has nothing to do with any conversation posted before.  Not even inspired by previous postings.  It's just.. sort of my life.

I believe my (our) image of time is relational to our perception of time.  That is, if you are three years old, one year is a third of your lifetime.  You are aware of the notion of birthdays, and can't wait until your next birthday.. but it's SO LONG away.  Meanwhile, at 80-years-old, another year is nothing to you.

Well, I am only 23-years-old.  One year is one year to me, because I am here now.  I know my birthday comes pretty fast, there is enough going on in my life to keep my mind from counting the days.

So, does this mean that my perception of time has to be updated frequently?  What happens if I ignore certain things?  I know a lot of it is stored relationally, so weeks get translated into new weeks as I relearn the concept of a week.  But what about the things I don't store in a communicable way?  Like, the amount of time it takes to shit or piss.  Who times that?  I can compare my piss just now to the previous one, but I have no idea if I piss longer or shorter now.  My bladder is bigger now than ten years ago, which is just one of the many variables of my urination duration.  Have I noticed?

There are other things I do actually spend time thinking about the timing for.  Mostly the vital ones.. work and cooking.  Both necessary for my survival.  These things are still rarely timed, but at least with cooking I know from recipes/directions a rough amount of minutes for the food to either be done in or flipped/checked.

There really aren't measures of time for in depth series of events spanning many months/years.  There are common time spans that we name, I can only think of ones dealing with raising families (trimesters in pregnancy, weeks since birth, toddler, kid, teen, adult).  But the spans are pretty general, and get pretty large as you look at larger spans of time.  On the other hand, you get the anal planning of government projects that spend billions of dollars.  Each day is budgeted, spanning ten years or more.  But these are complicated timetables that are stored in books and computers.

Do we have any concept of time longer than a year?