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My Life in Weeks

weeks.ginatrapani.org

201–210 of 272 posts

Re: My Life in Weeks

#201

Woah, look at how sparse our perception of reality is. We really can’t remember a full continuous memory, we constantly make things up to fill in the gaps. One take away here is to constantly and proactively fill up every single second with a positive memory.

That sounds exhausting.

For the wicked, certainly.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#202

So much of our life is consumed by work. Seeing your lifespan laid bare like this, there's a perverse instinct to optimize what remains. Have to be more productive, more efficient. But it's a bit like seeing you're bleeding out and deciding to optimize your blood donation schedule, isn't it?

Exactly. I have thought about it for a while, I think I have to get rid of work or family to be substantially happier. Apparently getting rid of family is morally wrong, so the only option is to get rid of work, somehow, anyhow. I fully understand why people buy lottery tickets. Hope beats probability on every single instance. I, a Master of Statistics graduates, buy them too.

> Apparently getting rid of family is morally wrong

Apparently? That's the only thing stopping you from "getting rid of your family" whatever that would mean in practical terms?

Are you Chris Watts' younger brother?

Jesus, wonder if some people even deserve families...

Re: My Life in Weeks

#203
I've also been inspired by the Wait But Why post and tried to implement my onw weeks visualization, I noticed that some years between birthdays are 53 weeks.

I guess she solves it by reseting the week start at every birthday (all weeks start on [weekday the of previous September 19]), and just before her birthday there's a block that is just 1 day long (or 2 when it's a leap year). The pedantic would then think "But that means it's not a week per block!". E.g. the WBW post has a very rigid grid.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#204

Very cool, thank you so much for sharing! One thing that hit me as a European is that you consider president inaugurations interesting enough to put in there! I mean, its a great point of reference, but still interesting to me. I couldn't tell you from when to when Merkel was chancellor, and I couldn't care less.

Politicians in the states have more influence and can still do something and effect change. In Europe we're way past that, they are just bureaucrats spinning wheels, extracting value and doing minor changes (some good, some bad), gradually boiling us alive until they extracted any value from society and we collapse.

In Europe legislative bodies are responsible for moving things along. The executive takes care of filling in the gaps, taking care of current affairs and international diplomacy. This is by design.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#205
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I scarcely recognize the person I was at 19 as the same person as me. I have almost no recollection of school except for maybe a couple of dozen moments and a handful - no more than 4 or so - acquaintances. They were friends at the time, but we went to different colleges in different towns, we're not close now. I remember books I read, but they're detached from a timeline. I remember programming - that was the most f…

I have it the same! But it’s not common. People are always puzzled by this lack of episodic memory.

Have you heard of Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory disorder? For me it's memory as it relates to myself that barely functions, I can remember facts just fine.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#207
I have something similar in an excel sheet! The horizontal axis is time and the vertical one is different categories like school, relationship, work, ... Then I merge and color cells for the duration of each "event". The thing I like about this is that I can see how different subjects in my life overlapped.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#208

Very cool, thank you so much for sharing! One thing that hit me as a European is that you consider president inaugurations interesting enough to put in there! I mean, its a great point of reference, but still interesting to me. I couldn't tell you from when to when Merkel was chancellor, and I couldn't care less.

Politicians in the states have more influence and can still do something and effect change. In Europe we're way past that, they are just bureaucrats spinning wheels, extracting value and doing minor changes (some good, some bad), gradually boiling us alive until they extracted any value from society and we collapse.

I have to vehemently disagree. There is a massive amount of bureaucracy, but good, meaningful changes are implemented.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first ~1000 are spent in the the very limited tutorial area. I think it's kinda strange that you're saying up to age 19 is "the very limited tutorial area", as if it doesn't count. Up to age 3 or 4, before you have stable memory, perhaps I could understand, but I'm well, well into middle age and I think of some of the time between say 10-19 as the most vivid in terms of my memories, friends, direction of my lif…

I have almost no <20 memories and I'm barely 40.

Hmm, I don't know. You can't really list your memories, but when something comes up, they appear.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#210
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think of some of the time between say 10-19 as the most vivid in terms of my memories, friends, direction of my life, etc. Me too. I think 12-14 is the most vivid for me... I used to enjoy stuff a lot more fully and completely than I seem to be able to nowadays. I miss that.

That makes sense. Just young enough to be able to fully emerse yourself in activities, while not quite old enough to have real worries. Of course I'm saying that from a position of privilege, but that was a sweet spot for me as well.

I did have many worries back then :) I just hadn't been practically crippled by trauma yet like I am today.
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