2025 is upon us and already the first month of the year is passing faster than expected. It feels like the older I get, the faster the days go by. One might wonder if days were shorter now than they were back in the 1970's and 80's, but they are actually longer. Not by much, but in July 2024, Andrew Wang and Jane J. Lee at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California published the article NASA-Funded Studies Explain How Climate Is Changing Earth’s Rotation in which they note that after 2000 there has been an uptick in how fast the days are lengthening, stating:
"For the period from 2000 to 2018, the rate of length-of-day increase due to movement of ice and groundwater was 1.33 milliseconds per century — faster than at any period in the prior 100 years, when it varied from 0.3 to 1.0 milliseconds per century."
In August of 2015 the website Explaining Science took a look at How the length of a day changes over the year. Measured by the length of time that the Sun is at its highest in the sky the length of a day varies between 24 hours 30 seconds in late December, and 23 hours 59 minutes 38 seconds in mid September. The article, which goes into detail about the Earth's orbit around the Sun and the Earth's rotation, notes that the change in the length of a day is very small throughout the year, stating:
"...the time for the Earth to turn once on its axis will vary by only 0.005 seconds during a year."
But wait... Are they getting longer? A trip over to Time And Date gives us stats on the length of a single day in both 2025 and 1985:
Date: Thursday, January 23, 2025
23 hours, 59 minutes, 59.9997268 seconds (-0.2732 milliseconds)
This day was 0.0002732 seconds shorter than 24 hours. This is the time it takes Earth to rotate 12.71 cm (5.00 in), as measured at the equator.
At the start of this day, UT1 was 0.0443722 seconds ahead of UTC.
Date: Wednesday, January 23, 1985
24 hours, 0 minutes, 0.0013951 seconds (1.3951 milliseconds)
This day was 0.0013951 seconds longer than 24 hours. This is the time it takes Earth to rotate 64.89 cm (25.55 in), as measured at the equator.
At the start of this day, UT1 was 0.1940590 seconds behind UTC.
So, yeah, there is a deep rabbit hole we could go down to figure out why it seems like the days are shorter now than they used to be, and if they are getting longer or shorter, but there is a simpler explanation.
There is just so much more to keep track of today than there was in decades past.
Just trying to fit a small portion of everything there is to track into each day is getting more difficult as the days go by.
When I was kid we had one channel on the television. A channel that only came in if I stood beside the TV and held the rabbit ears at just the right position, so that the aluminum foil flag that hung from it, and my own body, boosted the signal enough to allow me to watch a program. That rolled every few minutes.
Today there are a growing number of streaming services and games at our fingertips, and we can watch them on devices ranging from TVs the size of walls to headsets that take us into the gaming experience. Add to that a workday of 8 hours, trying to get at least 6 hours of sleep, attempting to eat healthy by preparing meals at home, taking care of children and/or pets, fitting in the time to go shopping or to various health appointments...
There is just not enough time in the day for all the things that we have access to and want to try to fit into a day in todays world; and there never has been.
So, what does that mean? And why have I spent some of my own precious time on writing this article?
The best way to do more is to do less. This means focusing on what matters and making each thing accomplish more than one goal. I am going to do that with my website by cutting out some of the things that have pulled me away from it and moving them to my website, and by making things serve more than one purpose. Such as this blog post not only being a restart of my website's blog, but also a guide to what I will focus on.
A few years ago I had rebuilt this site to track my novel work, Twitch streaming, 3D modeling, and gaming. In 2022 I shifted away from streaming and gaming because a group I had joined began to demand more of my time and had participation requirements that conflicted with the time I had available for streaming. This website, and my streaming, stumbled to a standstill.
I will not get into all that happened between mid 2022 and the end of 2024, but going into 2025 my focus is on recovering what was lost. Specifically my streaming, 3D modeling, writing, and this website.
Both the writing and streaming had a lot of behind the scenes work that I was trying to use several different tracking programs and services for. My 3D has been scattered between several programs, and my writing has been tracked in a growing number of locations. All of this has added up to a lot of wasted time and the goal that I set at the start of the year, to write more, becoming write less. Instead of writing I am spending time making sure I keep multiple sites updated regarding my writing progress. Which means finding where each project is being tracked, logging into the service, entering the information... it adds up.
So, my first goal for the remainder of January 2025 is to get this website under control and set up many of the things that I have been using other websites and programs for.
That starts today with this blog.
I started blogging before it had a name. I wrote my first online journal around 1993 when I was attending the Mat-Su Community College in Alaska. I would go to the computer lab or the local library and log into my online site, writing entries for my journal in sort of an open discussion with anyone that found it. Mostly I was writing about writing and life in Alaska.
Blogging has been such a large part of my life and work since that time that I know it is one of the things I need to pull to a focused point as part of my website rebuild, so I will be bringing all of the writing that could be part of a blog back to my website and posting it here at least several times a week. Topics that will include reviews of products and services I use. Reviews had been part of my first online journal, back in the early 90's, when I would discuss things such as what pens I was using for writing or what I thought of a new journal I had bought, or a book I had read.
Around 2006 I was working as an online advertising copywriter, a job that ended in 2008 when my mom passed away. I have been planning to get back to reviewing some of the things I buy or am sent, and maybe even back into copywriting, so reviews are going to be a part of this blog going forward.
All of this to say that I am returning to my work as a blogger, I will eventually return to streaming, and rather the days are getting longer or shorter, I am going to be prioritizing this website and the things it focuses on: Writing, Twitch Streaming, 3D modeling, and Unreal Engine for games and film work. If you have read this far and have an interest in those topics I hope I can provide beneficial content that makes it worth whatever time you spend on my website in the days, weeks, and years ahead. Thank you for taking the time to read this entry, and I look forward to what lies ahead.