How I visualize the months of the year
April 26, 2008
5:19 am
This is going to be a strange post.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve visualized the months of the year as being physical objects (like pages from a monthly calendar) arranged in a specific fashion.
This is how every year looks in my mind:
When I think of “now” in a month-to-month sense, I visualize myself as standing on the appropriate month on that layout. If I think about another month, I visualize myself looking at the other month’s placeholder. So when I look at September from April, I’m standing on April, facing South.
I don’t know how this started. It changed a bit, over time. It used to transition from down to left after September instead of after August, but it eventually blended into this form. Note that on midnight on January 1st, I don’t visualize myself jumping across the gap (nor do I jump between any other months). I just warp there.
I’m unusually conscious of this physical layout when I’m playing Tetris. When I say things like “I can’t believe it’s June already!” I’m actually thinking “I can’t believe we’re headed down already!”
The sections (January to April, May to August, September to December) roughly match Florida three seasons (which are Summer, Fall, Still Fall But I Guess We Can Call It Spring). I was home schooled for K-11, and I didn’t get summers off, so that doesn’t explain the direction change for summer. Sometimes when I count out months, I tap out this pattern.
Anyone else have anything that they visualize in a non-traditional manner?
Do you think you have synesthesia in general?
That’s weird, but cool. Always good to run into a fellow homeschooled-er (K-12 for me)! And better if that person is a WordPress core dev–two awesome things at once! That calendar thing though…that is weird. I am usually good at remembering strings of numbers (like phone numbers) if I try, and I do it by figuring out “random” ways they are related to each other (by their even/oddness or some other mathematical relationship). But it doesn’t usually involve visualization, and definitely not in the same way.
Oh yeah, and filosofo, your interesting synesthesia link was the catalyst for a long blog-rant that kept me up much later than intended. Thanks for that
Wow, this is the first time I’ve heard of someone else visualizing the months as “oddly” as I do! I’ve polled friends and family for years and all of them nearly universally say they just see the months laid out flat, like a yearly calendar.
My calendar can best be described as a running track, like you’d find at any typical high school. The track is 3-D, looking down on it from maybe 45 deg. above. January is at the 3 o’clock position and then the months progress counter-clockwise (just like a running track) linearly in a complete oval, until the year starts over. The year is indeed “oval” for me, with summer and winter being the longer “sides” and spring/fall being the shorter.
I also have a weird visualization of numbers…
filosofo, no — but thanks for the link! I knew about synesthesia with regard to numbers, but I didn’t know that it also included calendar associations.
And holy crap, I found someone whose mental calendar almost exactly matches mine. I’m seriously freaked out by this. What is really strange is that my calendar used to be exactly like hers, with September in the lower-right slot. And she’s right about January and December seeming closer than they should be. And it does that without and warping or shortening of the summer months. It’s almost like a mirage… it looks one way when I stare at January and December, but changes when I look at it as a whole.
Howdy, month-imagining-twin!
I don’t think I imagine my calendar in that way, but I remember when I was a kid and freaked out when I realized my name was spelled out by the first letters of July-November. I use some spatial relationships for single digit numbers when I’m counting in my head sometimes.
That is so funny! I have also done this my whole life. But my vision looks more like … well, a monopoly board with the months in a circle around an empty center. And I view it kind of from a tilted angle.
Actually, I do much the same thing, and more to boot. Prepare to enter the Twilight Zone…
For me the year looks like an oval on its side, with December at the top, and the months going clockwise with March at the far right, June at the bottom, and September at the far left. The center is hollow. I don’t know why it looks like this.
Going further, the days of the week are weird too: blocks stacked five high, similar to your calendar only vertical, with Monday at the bottom and Friday at the top. At Friday make a sharp left turn and you have Saturday, and below that Sunday, then go right and back to Monday. And the *really* weird part is that Saturday and Sunday are each the same size as the other days of the week, but that can’t be possible since going left from Friday to Saturday then down to Sunday then right again should take you back to Thursday, not Monday… agh…
And even THAT is not the REALLY weird thing. I think of ALL NUMBERS in a bizarrely visual way, with similar block structures for different sections of numbers, i.e. 1..10 goes straight up, then right for 11 and 12, then up 13..100, then turn left for 101-200, then up again for 201..1000, then right to 10,000, etc etc etc. It’s like a really weird long maze that makes no sense. Frankly I think that’s why I struggled with math in school, because I have to map numbers to this visual matrix that makes no sense and does nothing to help me solve the problem but instead just gets in the way.
I’ve never known anybody else who thinks in this fashion, so its interesting to see that somebody else does the same kind of thing. I’m definitely a visual learner, and I’d be willing to bet you have a strong visual learning aspect as well.
This is fascinating! My attention was grabbed by the diagram of the calendar. Mine is not the same, but I do visualise the year’s months laid out always in the same way, and not exactly straight. Mine are linear, and each month occupies a square with its name written on it, but the ‘track’ begins with January about two thirds up on the left of my mental image and goes down to December near to the middle on the right. The track does a half twist in the middle to achieve this. The month’s names are written on the squares sideways, but I read them straight. Also, whichever month I am in, I’m standing by its left bottom corner looking towards the right, and that month is bigger than the others, the rest fading off right and left like a wide angle lens. When I’m in January I’m at the top of the track looking down its length, but in December, January is off to my right, heading off back the way I came. However, when I get into January, I’m back at the top of the track on the left again. I’ve always thought that was a tad weird.
Same here, Mark. I’m listening the audiobook of Musicophilia. The author discusses synesthesia, and like you, I thought it referred only to seeing musical notes or numbers as colors, or having smells and tastes. Had no idea there was “spatial” and “conceptual” synesthesia. I see the 12 months in a similar shape, but August, Sept, Oct, and Nov extend further down, and part of November and all of December occupy the bottom. Strange, eh?
I went to public school and hated summer: long and boring! The summer months on my “chart” are elongated in my mind, and the rest of the year accelerates.
That’s remarkable! I see the year in a similar way, only in a sort of C-shape, and with the months of the year circling around to the left instead of the right.
I also see personalities in letters (”A” is a jolly, cheerleader type, while “B” is withdrawn and shy, etc.), but that’s just probably my vivid imagination.
I have always seen the months as monthy calendars from the left to the right. January is directly below December of the previous year. The calendars are standard calendars with each week starting with Sunday.
The reason I came across this page is that I have always wondered how others visualize the number system. The whole scheme is rathe complex but it is primarily in ranks of numbers for each decade but the first two decades (1-19) are different. I have never tried to write it all down so I’m finding it hard to know how to do it succinctly. One thing about the numbers is that they are related to the history with the numbers below 1 are seen as years in the 19th century (again in decades). The earlier centuries are in parallel with each other with historic events popping up as I know about them.
Strangely, when I think about the 1500s and eariler I am suddenly transported across the Atlantic to Europe. The centuries below what I could call the Dark Ages then migrate down to the Italian area ending at 0. Then the numbers continue to migrate to the middle east as the details become more obscure but definitely related to my knowledge of history.
Much more could be said about the 1-99 number scheme and also about how the thousand, millions, trillions… work. Enough for now.
Wow. Way cool. My year is more of a doughnut, with June (my birthday month) the fattest and the middle of December to the middle of January as the skinniest. It’s hard to explain, actually. It’s kind of like a mobius strip, but without the twist. (Does that make any sense?)
exellent way of looking at the year ahead
Mine is a D shape but is not in a level plane. The months Jan through Mar are the bottom of the D as it goes counterclockwise around. However, this is down hill. When it gets to August, the D has a sharper curve to it (why?). Then Nov and December are the straight portions of the D.