When time flies for everyone but you

On living in your time zone

Exactly a month ago today, I was on a flight from Türkiye to London, doing everything I could to pass time. I've always loved flying, but this time I couldn't settle into the journey the way I usually do. Only this wasn't just any flight—it was the one that would finally end months of long distance. 

I tried everything: dozed off, woke up even more restless, so I started writing instead. I wrote about leaving my family behind—that bittersweet ache of being thrilled for where you’re going while guilty for who you’re leaving. Then I put my headphones back on, listened to the same playlist on repeat until I couldn’t daydream to it anymore.

None of it worked. I wanted off that plane. I wanted to grab my checked bag, sprint through Gatwick, take the Tube to King’s Cross, one more hour of London commute and finally run into my boyfriend’s arms. Every minute dragged like a lifetime.

If there's one thing time won't let you forget, it's the irony of knowing you should be present while desperately wanting to be anywhere else. That's the paradox of time - you have to surrender and let moments unfold as they are meant to.

So I tried to practice what I preach and give presence to the moment I was in. That's when I started noticing the other passengers.

I wasn’t the only one suspended in time — the woman to my left kept fidgeting with her wedding ring, twisting it around her finger over and over. She kept checking her phone even though we were in airplane mode. Time seemed to be crawling for her too, but for completely different reasons.

The guy next to her had his headphones in, completely locked in an action movie on his tablet. Explosions lit up his face in the dim cabin light. Two hours had probably felt like twenty minutes to him.

The kids in front of me were deep in some game on a Nintendo Switch, passing the Switch back and forth, whispering strategies. For them, five hours had probably disappeared without notice.

We were all on the same plane, breathing the same recycled air, sharing the same five-hour flight from Dalaman to Gatwick, yet moving at completely different speeds of time.

I've been thinking about this a lot since then. How time isn't really the same for any of us, even when we're sitting inches apart. And this year, I learned just how personal time really is.

For the last seven months, time has felt like it was racing and standing still all at once. It started in February when I finally packed my entire Los Angeles life into suitcases after months of contemplating whether I was ready to move abroad with my boyfriend. Those months of wondering what was next for us had crawled by—long distance has this way of making time feel frozen.

But once I decided, everything sped up.

We boarded a one-way flight to London, only to pack again and move to Belgium two weeks later. We told ourselves we'd figure it out as we went, but we had no idea just how much waiting was ahead of us. March and April blurred together in another temporary Airbnb, most of our things still locked away in storage.

In May, we thought we'd found steady ground, finally a place to call our own. Visa delays had other plans. Our time ran out and we had to leave the country, dragging those same suitcases out once again—the ones we'd sworn we were done with. Three months of uncertainty had aged us in ways the calendar couldn't measure.

Now we had exactly ninety days to wait before we could return to the apartment we'd barely lived in. Ninety numbered days that somehow felt both eternal and fleeting. June blurred into July, July into August—each month a new address, another set of keys, another temporary place to call home.

Seven moves in seven months across three countries will teach you that time has different speeds depending on what you're going through.

Waiting-for-your-visa-approval time doesn’t move, it stalls, like the hour before boarding when your gate hasn’t been announced. Packing-your-life-again time slips through your hands…you blink and the boxes are taped but you can’t remember what you buried in them.

It’s not just the big life changes. It happens every single day. Your morning coffee might be this slow, sacred ritual where you sit by the window and watch the world wake up. Mine might be me burning my tongue because I'm rushing out the door with my mug still steaming. Same ten minutes on the clock. Completely different experience of time.

We act like time is this universal thing and sure, the digital clock on the airplane seat in front of you ticks the same for everyone. But the clock inside you? The one that speeds up when you're nervous and slows down when you're bored and stops completely when you get bad news? That one's entirely yours.

When you're anxious, minutes feel like hours. When you're absorbed in something you love, like the movie guy with his action flick, hours disappear without you noticing. When you're waiting for something you want desperately, like me on that flight, every second stretches like it's mocking you.

I was still eager to land, still mentally rehearsing that moment when I’d finally see him waiting for me at arrivals. But I was also there, in that weird suspended moment between where I'd been and where I was going.

Maybe that's the thing about time. We spend so much of it waiting for the next moment, the better moment, the moment we're actually excited about. The reunion. The new apartment. The visa approval. The wedding. The weekend. But this moment, this boring, in-between, uncomfortable moment at 35,000 feet, this is our time too.

For someone who grew up crossing real time zones, the lesson wasn’t that time moves differently for all of us, though it does. It’s that we have more control over our inner time zones than we think.

Sure, I still catch myself fighting the clock, wishing it would hurry up or slow down. But this year showed me waiting should mean being present in the space between, without panic, without resentment, and with enough trust that this moment has something to offer too.

Some days I live in anticipation time. 
Some days in presence time. 
Some days in gratitude time.

And the time zone that matters most, it turns out, is the one I choose to live in.

Currently writing from Belgium time, both geographical and emotional. What time zone is your heart living in today?