{"id":397,"date":"2008-06-17T11:48:46","date_gmt":"2008-06-17T10:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=397"},"modified":"2014-07-29T10:19:41","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T09:19:41","slug":"liz-wager-life-in-the-fast-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/06\/17\/liz-wager-life-in-the-fast-lane\/","title":{"rendered":"Liz Wager: Life in the fast lane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/site\/blog\/icons\/lizwager.jpg\" alt=\"Liz Wager\" width=\"162\" height=\"110\" align=\"left\" \/>Has anyone ever studied why life speeds up the older you get? John Mortimer (in The Summer of a Dormouse \u2013 which should be required reading for any geriatrics rotation) puts it beautifully \u2026 &#8220;In childhood, the afternoons spread out for years. For the old, the years flicker past like the briefest of afternoons. The playwright Christopher Fry, now 93, told me that after the age of 80 you seem to be having breakfast every five minutes.&#8221;<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m still only about half John Mortimer\u2019s age, but undeniably puzzled about where the first half of 2008 went. Looking for the name of a restaurant where I\u2019d had lunch with a friend quite recently (as I thought) I saw from my diary that we met nearly a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t believe I am any busier than I was in my late 20s or any happier (in case the old saying about time flying when you are enjoying yourself contains a grain of truth). But have you ever noticed how return journeys always seem shorter than outward ones? (And I don\u2019t mean when you cross the Atlantic from the UK, when the jet stream can be blamed for long outward flights,when you wish you weren\u2019t awake for so long, and short return flights, when you wish you could be asleep for longer.)<\/p>\n<p>So my theory is that familiarity breeds acceleration rather than contempt \u2013 I hope somebody can suggest a method of testing this.<\/p>\n<p><strong>About Liz Wager<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Liz Wager is a freelance writer, trainer and publications consultant who works<br \/>\nfor a number of pharmaceutical companies, communication agencies, publishers and academic institutions. She is also the Secretary of COPE (the Committee On<br \/>\nPublication Ethics) and a member of the BMJ\u2019s Ethics Committee.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read Liz\u2019s previous blogs<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Would you review a paper by your ex husband?\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/06\/03\/liz-wager-would-you-review-a-paper-by-your-ex-husband\/\" target=\"_blank\">Would you review a paper by your ex-husband?<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Researchers behaving badly\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/04\/18\/liz-wager-researchers-behaving-badly\/\" target=\"_blank\">Training and the placebo effect<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Researchers behaving badly\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/04\/18\/liz-wager-researchers-behaving-badly\/\" target=\"_blank\">Researchers behaving badly<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Has anyone ever studied why life speeds up the older you get? John Mortimer (in The Summer of a Dormouse \u2013 which should be required reading for any geriatrics rotation) [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/06\/17\/liz-wager-life-in-the-fast-lane\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1404],"tags":[227],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liz-wager","tag-gerontology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Liz Wager: Life in the fast lane - The BMJ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/06\/17\/liz-wager-life-in-the-fast-lane\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liz Wager: Life in the fast lane - The BMJ\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Has anyone ever studied why life speeds up the older you get? 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