Losing Track of Time—By Moving Through It

I’ve never been someone who loses track of time in stillness.
Some people sit by the ocean and watch waves roll in like slow breath.
They stare at the sky and say they’re thinking about nothing.
I respect that. I admire it, even.

But it is not me.

Stillness makes me restless.

I lose track of time when I’m moving.
Running down the wing in a game of soccer.
Timing a run just right in touch footy.
Watching the ball rise and fall under a high sky in backyard cricket.
I played soccer competitively for fifty years—off and on—until life caught up and training became too hard to get to.
I still miss it.
Not the competition, really. Just the rhythm. The movement.
The way a body in motion forgets what time is.

During lockdown, when the world shrank to four walls and a 5km radius, I started growing native plants from seed.
Banksias, mostly.
I didn’t mean to care about it so much.
But something about the patience, the fragility, the quiet miracle of it all…
Time passed in hours I never counted.
Now I walk by places where I planted them and they’re still there. Still growing.
That feels like something.

And bushwalking—just walking—has become its own kind of balm.
I used to walk for two hours every Saturday, not because I was trying to be reflective,
but because I couldn’t help it.
Ideas would come. So would questions.
And by the time I got home, I’d need to sit down and write—
not because I had to
but because something in me wanted to keep moving, even if it was only with words.

Some people lose themselves in their thoughts.
I lose myself in the doing.
In chasing a ball. In walking a trail.
In carrying soil under my fingernails.

That’s how I move through the world.

Daily writing prompt

Which activities make you lose track of time?

View all responses