What if time was a buffet? Like what if you could pick what you wanted to experience at that time, but it was still linear. Like you have to experience everything but what if in between stints of boredom or loneliness you could experience just a few minutes of something else from your life.

And I’m not talking “experience for a few moments” like look at a picture. Because that’s reminiscing. I’m talking like lucid dreaming but one step forward. Literally being there. Literally experiencing it.

What if you could take breaks between writing that essay to finish a puzzle with your friend, so you can decompress and forget all about it because– oh, yeah– the puzzle and the essay are two years apart.

But of course if you can jump backwards and then forwards again, you can just as easily jump forwards and back again. So what if, during those times of doubt, those am-I-really-doing-this? moments, you could jump forward to the life you know you’ll have? You could jump forward and see your mortgage, your family, and the sunlight filtering through the curtains. Only to jump back a bit later to “current-time” and have an oh-yeah-that’s-why-I’m-doing-this. moment.

Because even though I read and write all the time, sometimes I literally don’t want to. Sometimes it’s actually torture and I empathize with the people who can’t stand the Bard. Because sometimes that’s me.

So what if I could jump to those two weeks in the summer when I really wanted something to read but never found the right book? What if, during the semester, I could jump back to then, read the book I have to read for my class at 5, and have it finished? And enjoy it? Then I could jump to “current-time” and it’d all be sorted.

According to the law of conservation of mass, mass cannot be created nor destroyed. And I’m not asking for that. I know that, similarly, time cannot be created nor destroyed. All I’m asking for is a buffet. A buffet of time that I can experience on my own time. Still linear for everyone else, including me; everything will still be experienced. But instead of it being forced on me like an entree I didn’t realize would be that salty, it’s a buffet. It’s what I want, when I want.