Years feel faster when every day is the same. Repeat days blur together and disappear.

Repetition gets compressed by memory into a single entry, so a year of near identical days is stored as roughly one day repeated. That is why a period can feel enormous while you are inside it and take up almost no room afterwards. The acceleration people describe is mostly a storage problem.

Build a few markers into the year rather than waiting for the year to produce them. A trip, a course, something with a date that will not come round twice. Three or four of those give a year a shape you can still find later.