Shoelaces

Plush Dinosaurs

I think I'm beginning to adjust to this "ball of time" thing, because the longer I stay here in the afterlife, the less it feels like the time spent is actually getting longer. It's like Alex said at the beginning, I can just fit more instances between when I originally got here and now, instead of lengthening the time to fit more instances. I'm cutting the shoelace into smaller pieces, instead of adding another shoelace. So, it's weird. Because whenever I check back on Earth, they are progressing as normal.

And it feels like I haven't progressed at all.

And time on Earth is definitely progressing as normal. Even more, the longer I'm here in the afterlife, the faster it seems time is going on Earth. And I have no idea how that plays into this whole "ball of time" thing, but it's definitely happening. Let me explain. So, after my complete mental breakdown about trying to sabotage Santi's life, I vowed that I would watch EarthVision once a week, no more, no less. Once a week would give enough content to make a substantial highlight reel, but also not have too much information that some pieces would be overlooked.

That's how it was going for a while, once a week. I would watch Jazmine and Santi further their studies. One week, they even took a long trip towards each other along the coast, meeting up for an extended weekend. I watched my family celebrate holidays with each other and go on vacation. Pri is very bittersweet about not having to sleep on the floor when I used to get the bed at hotels. Actually, bittersweet isn't the right word. She's happy, just pretending to be sad. And I don't blame her. I would do the same.

But then, one week, I logged onto EarthVision, and it turned out I missed a whole week, as in the last time I watched was two weeks ago. I checked my calendar, which I obviously wasn't checking enough, and it turns out EarthVision wasn't lying to me. I missed a whole week. So, I thought, okay, I missed a week, so what? It would be a one-time thing, like missing your bus. But everybody knows you don't only miss your bus once, you miss your bus multiple times, then finally switch to a different bus. So that's what I did too. After I missed EarthVision for a week, two sessions in a row, I figured what the afterlife. (Like what the hell, you know?) Why not just do check-ins bi-weekly, instead of weekly (bi-weekly meaning once every other week, not twice a week)?

So, easy enough, I started watching every other week, which just meant slightly longer viewing sessions just less frequent. And if the highlight reel ever decided to skip something, I could just go back and get to it manually if I really wanted to. And it's not like my weekly EarthVision sessions were the only thing I was doing in the afterlife. I spent days, if not weeks, "living" in different places or times, it was amazing. They have this rule that you can't visit a time where you still had an "impact" (to put it simply, which also meant that celebrities are kinda fucked if they want to visit the future but whatever, unless they get exceptions, who knows), so I either had to go farther into the future or deeper into the past. But I could still live for a week in Victorian England or see the future world that I could barely imagine. And other than practically time-travelling, I filled my time between my bi-weekly viewing sessions by spending loads of time with Alex and Haley, and they somehow haven't gotten tired of me yet. I've also been doing random things around the Hub, and I actually forced myself to get good at painting, so now I can draw a still-life and whichever artist who's the master of still-life's would be jealous (that's a lie, I'm still shitty, but not really fucking shitty, so that's progress). Most importantly, I've started tending to Rebecca's garden, and keeping the remaining part of her alive, to my best ability that is. Did I ask for some help in preventing the plants from dying? Yes, but I'll never tell. So, yeah, I had a lot of things to occupy my time and bi-weekly meetings were how things were going.

And then I missed a bi-weekly appointment because I spent too much time in Ancient Greece. Okay, no big deal, I'll go now then again in two weeks.