A Walker in the Suburbs

I always try to work one more task into the time at hand. Perish the thought of arriving early. I like to scribble one more paragraph, crochet one more row, send one more email. As a result I’m often five minutes late when I could easily have been on time. 

Why is this? Turns out, the condition has a name: I’m a time optimist or tidsoptimist, which means the same thing in Swedish (where it has apparently been identified and studied).

I first heard about time optimism from my youngest daughter, herself a time optimist, a skill she no doubt picked up from me. We have gotten many laughs talking about our “condition.”

What is the cure for this tidsoptimism? I’m not sure, but it’s definitely not trying to answer five emails, read the paper, and write a blog post in 30 minutes.

Today, we come to the last day of the year, a day that inspires both retrospection and awe. I’m thinking of the awe part right now. Of the fact that, in what seems like six or at the very most nine months time, an entire year has passed.

How to savor these days that pass so quickly, to empty them to the dregs, to leave behind the worries that cloud them. I turn to a book that made an impression when I read it early last year, enough of an impression that when asked my favorite book of 2025, this is the one I picked. (Weirdly, I don’t seem to have written about it here.)

In Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman reminds us that “the trouble with attempting to master your time, it turns out, is that time ends up mastering you.” It’s when we’re in a flow state, practicing our art, or caring for a newborn, that time drops away.

This isn’t some touchy-feely book about losing one’s self in the moment, though. Instead, it’s a cold-eyed look at how much time we really have, about 4,000 weeks, give or take a few.

This is a philosophical tract more than a “how to” book. When we accept the finiteness of our time on earth, we pick out a few important tasks and concentrate on them.

For some strange reason, I find this comforting — especially on the last day of a very full year.

During the period of my life when I commuted downtown, I remember enjoying these early hours. Waking before 6, leaving for Metro in the darkness, the winding two-lane roads quiet and still. I’d relish the gloaming, easy on the eyes. Often, the sun would rise as I was driving, a faint light in the east.

Now I watch day break from my upstairs office. Orange-leaved trees emerge from darkness, first the witch hazel, then the crepe myrtle. The time change has given me back this pleasure. My eyes pop open at 5:30 instead of 6:30.

I like getting a jump on the day. I like being a lark. I’m just more of one now.

A cloudy day, the sky seems wrapped in cotton wool, blunting the edges of this new time, of the day that would already seem later than it is were there a sun with which to measure it.

Walking home yesterday, our nearest star already prepping for a 5:06 setting, I marveled at how comfortable I feel on the Reston trails. Crushed acorns underfoot. New vistas from leaf fall. A buck chasing a doe. A bird sound I don’t recognize — maybe a visitor on his way south.

As the season turns, I feel a sense of coziness in the woods. Each bent branch a hymn of praise. Each stretch of shining lake water a benediction.

With fewer light-filled hours to be outside, each one is more precious.

I remember a spring years ago when the March temperatures stayed stubbornly in the 40s (the highs, that is) and it seemed as if the forsythia would never bloom. This was in the old days, before I’d planted crocus and miniature daffodils, bleeding heart and buttercups. Back then, the forsythia was our only bellwether.

It must have been a long winter. The girls were young, maybe not yet in school, and we had been cooped up inside for what seemed like forever.

Every day we would go out in the chill and check the forsythia buds. Maybe we checked them too often. Maybe they were the watched pot that never boils. Whatever the reason, I remember the jubilation when they finally burst into bloom.

This year, that same forsythia bloomed almost without my noticing it. A result of warming weather patterns — or speeding time?

As the year winds down today, I plan to be scribbling about it in my journal. It’s been a ritual for decades, begun when my typical New Year’s Eve plans involved babysitting for the family down the block.

When I was younger, I would take these retrospectives quite seriously, composing a highlights reel of the year I’d just lived. I’m a little more jaunty about New Year’s Eve entries now, though I don’t know why I should be. Each year life becomes more precious.

I think it’s because I realize that the beating heart of a year is not to be found in a list of what happened and how I felt about it. What matters are the aha moments: Witnessing a spectacular sunset. Falling asleep to the gentle patter of rain on the roof. Glimpsing on an adult child’s face the exact same expression she’s had since birth.

These are the moments that matter. And today, I’ll be celebrating them.

Yesterday unwound slowly, with a small baptism and lunch afterward. As the afternoon continued, I thought about the tasks that waited for me back home: schoolwork and prep for Thursday. I have lists, and lists of lists.

But it was so nice to sit and visit, to let the kiddos run in and out of the house, their cheeks rosy with the cold. To listen, to chat, to laugh.

Back home, I realized there was daylight enough still to walk. Then, after dinner, I realized that I still had time to do the reading and viewing required for Tuesday’s class. In other words, I’d completed as much in that compressed schedule as I would have over hours.

I often wish I could do less on Sundays, not just for religious reasons, but because it’s good to pause and take stock, to have one day a week that’s different from the others. Yesterday, without planning to, I almost did.