> This is a depressing thought to consider in (linear) middle age, but it is hard to escape the feeling that it is essentially true. Childhood memories have an intensity and a vibrancy that it is difficult for the rest of life to match.

Could anyone who is extremely fortunate and never had to work for money share their experience on this?

I find that the years that I spent on art (playing around, learning new things, not taking other peoples' orders) lasted longer than the ones I spent doing software development for money. Both were fun, but the remaining memories differ by intensity.

I personally don't find the logarithmic experience theory convincing. Why are the first three or so years excluded from this? It seems more likely that new experiences make more impact, or that repeated memories make them more intense. Or dozens of other theories.

My family was not wealthy but I got the luck being born in the EU in a country where edu and Healthcare were basically free and you really cannot end up under a bridge unless extreme mental (and drugs issues that follow that) problems. My parents, even though we did not have much, always taught us to never follow orders unless you think they make sense and follow our own path. I guess that is why I mostly have no difference in vividness; I always did my own thing, that happens to be writing software so I got lucky and got rich by building stuff I thought was nice and needed. I still do that while also doing art (welding sculptures and writing). 2025 was not less vibrant than my childhood. Of course I am the most annoying employee; if you tell me 'have to', I will definitely never ever do it. So I never been an employee; guess that is the luxury you mentioned.

I have no clue how it would have turned out if I would have grown up in a country without a safety net. I hope the same as I never needed that net and will never need it, however I am not so sure; it makes taking risks very easy...

Last few years I've been my own boss mostly doing whatever I feel like with several years funds comfortable and no real pressure to do or die. Time hasn't really slowed down. I also took a year completely off work in 2016, that one also passed very quickly.

If anything, having new experiences is what seems to slow down time in my experience. Visiting new locations, doing and learning new things. I suppose more things will be new to the young than the old, so it would make sense as an alternative hypothesis.

I've also had a bad tooth ache since the day before Christmas I haven't been able to get dealt with since all the local dentists are off, and it feels like it's been the longest week in my life. Dunno if I'd recommend it as a way of prolonging the subjective experience of time though.

Another anecdote is that last year I quit coffee cold turkey, and a side effect was that time seemed to slow down significantly. A lot of people seem to be reporting this. Make of it what you want. Quitting coffee also sucks quite a lot, though not as bad as week of severe tooth ache.

My best and “longest” memories are from a two year period spent in the university when I had earned some money in internships and could live with few obligations.

That was the happiest I’ve ever been.

Childhood is mostly blocked out (abusive parents, poverty), and adulthood is mostly work.

Maybe we just remember the periods when we’ve been happy. It would make sense evolutionarily.

i basically never had to work (EU privilege + luck of being born the skill of knowing how to sell to people well) and only worked on stuff that i enjoyed and not a lot of hours (and that turned into millions fast) and my 20s/30s flew like months instead of years and didn't have the intensity of my teen years. I think it's because despite technically travelling and living in different countries a lot, going to a new place is not really a new experience after you visit 7 very different ones. The same with women and a lot of other experiences. Having kids was the only think that surprised me. Making money got old fast (i mean trying to get to the "next" level)

Never been rich but .. who's richer, the one who has more stuff / buying power or the one who has less material needs? Anyway, I was always pretty frugal and lucked out on passive income 6 years ago but even before that I never had full time jobs and all my life I basically worked just enough to get by, never cared much about saving.

From my experience childhood felt like grinding my way to max level in an MMO. Had to be done to start playing the game but didn't really care for it. I had more freedom since I was 18 than before so I cherish those memories more.

Art can turn into work too. Spending ~4-5y on a solo graphic novel[1] was mostly about finding that routine of making sure to spend a few hours of every workday working on the comic instead of just faffing about aimlessly.

1: http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/

>I find that the years that I spent on art (playing around, learning new things, not taking other peoples' orders) lasted longer than the ones I spent doing software development for money.

>I personally don't find the logarithmic experience theory convincing.

I think this tracks though. When you do art or other things you can explore different things. Doing the same thing for 40-60h per week is just not such a varied experience.

I, of course, have plenty of vivid memories from childhood. But I've also been fortunate to be able to travel in all senses - quick tourist vacation, a few months backpacking, and multi-year slow travel where I mostly just lived in different places (different nature settings, towns, cities etc).

Tourism is generally forgettable and I don't recommend it to anyone - save the money and do something where you live.

Backpacking feels meaningful in the moment, but is also largely forgettable. I truly have almost no meaningful memories from 2 separate 2 month trips in Europe and southeast Asia.

The slow travel is most recent, was the most "boring" but also, I think, most meaningful as I was explicitly focused on self-reflection and discovery of a more meaningful way to live after many years (or a lifetime, really) of aiming to be a better cog in the machine. I don't have a lot of "memories" - highlights that I reminisce about - from it, but rather various phase shifts/epiphanies in my understanding of myself, life, the world etc...

I now live in relative poverty in a poor country where I have been working for 7+ years to develop a project for the benefit of the multitudes who can't even conceive of being able to do anything that I've just describe. And for whom even childhood is rather joy and wonder-less, because of how hard life is. I'm mostly glued to my computer again, but it's not soul sucking in the way it was in a cubicle with spreadsheets - because the purpose is meaningful.

I do miss the slow travel days - they were absolutely the most enjoyable period of my life. But I've also met people who have done that for decades and they're profoundly sad people - they have no roots or connections anywhere, no meaningful vocation, etc.

A meaningful life is to be actively involved in the sorrows of the world, with joy.

Still, I really ought to get a bit more play and exploration back into my life.

In the past year, I've been coaching teen soccer/football and that has been wonderful. Both to help me fix my desk-broken body, as well as to help them, principally, become better humans. To succeed on the field they need to develop the same characteristics needed to succeed in life - discipline, determination, cooperation, empathy, solidarity, creativity, perspective, vision, patience, and more. The world around them is largely bereft of such things, so it has been challenging.

But they're vastly better at playing now than a year ago, and I've heard they generally behave better at home as well. The difference between this and the article's version of living through your kids is a) they're not my kids and b) I'm focused on helping them become proper adults via play, whereas the article is largely about recreating Neverland where everything is childish. I expect it'll be unlikely that I'll instill much community spirit in them - though, perhaps we'll incorporate some community service into the training at some point. But it all does seem meaningful.

Still, the real focus and crux of my life is the overarching project to help people everywhere become more self-sufficient. Hopefully I'll be finally ready in the next year or so to "go public" with it, and that people will be receptive to using it, collaborating, helping etc...

I recently came to realise that my memories of my experiences of early childhood are probably greatly affected by seeing my younger siblings going through those same experiences a few years later. At age five or six I would see my mother reading to them on the sofa and they would be lying with their heads on her tummy feeling her warmth and listening to her heartbeat and stomach gurgles. Seeing this would remind me of when I used to do that, thus reinforcing those memories and probably somewhat distorting them. One of the distortions is that this memory is set in the house we moved to when I was four, and most of my own relevant experiences would have been set in our previous house. I think the accumulation of memories is a bit like training an LLM on a combination of new data and its own data.