How to you "visualise" a year?

[desperatetostaypositive]

I was talking to dh about how I picture a year in my mind, and he doesn't do this. His year is just one month after another in a straight line.
Mine is a circle (I'll try and attach a picture)

The whole bottom edge is the summer holidays and the top Christmas. It's completely disproportionate to the timescale! I've always viewed my years in my minds eye like this.

Anyone else?

Not a picture, but I don't see each month as being equal. A month with five weekends seems longer, a winter month seems longer, and summer I picture as being short but autumn a bit longer.

This is how I visualise it

SEPT OCT NOV DEC
JAN FEB MARCH APRIL
MAY JUNE JULY AUG

I too have tried to explain this to others who think I've gone bonkers.

Mine has always been in blocks of colour. I do my weeks like that too 🤣

Ooh, I've always done this too and I love talking about it with others who do it as well!

My year veers off in my mind's eye to the left, in month 'blocks' (of sorts) reaching a kind of pinnacle in July and August and then falling away again over autumn through to Christmas. It's not a circle because I can 'see' the following year or two starting off from their starting points. I suppose it's like a wavy, curving line going off towards infinity, to the left . I've tried to draw it for someone before but failed miserably... It didn't want to be drawn - it only works on my own head...

It's not coloured as such but it's lighter and brighter (sort of golden) in the summer and really dark at Christmas, with gradients in between. Which makes sense, I suppose.

I visualise longer/shorter periods of time differently.

@Timepasses

This is how I visualise it

SEPT OCT NOV DEC
JAN FEB MARCH APRIL
MAY JUNE JULY AUG

I too have tried to explain this to others who think I've gone bonkers.

Each month is also in their own box.

Sounds absolute madness when written down.

Omg this blows my mind
Straight line for me but the summer is kinda grouped together and happy looking haha

Mine is 3D so I couldn’t draw it but I could probably make it out of something (I often think if I was a computer whizz I could design it that way). I tried to explain it to DH once and he thought I was nuts - I got him to give me a day, month or year and I would point to where it was in the room. He thought I was making it up but the thing is they’re ALWAYS in the same place.

It’s in a line going broadly left to right but sometimes it turns a right angle, or goes up a step. Saturday is the biggest day, followed by Sunday (which sort of falls of a cliff into Monday) but Wednesday is also tall and pointy in the middle of the week.

It is a type of synasthesia - completely fascinating! I don’t have any other sort though. Can totally see why none of this makes sense unless your brain works this way.

Just by the seasons

Mine is basically a square with December at the top and all the summer months up one side

Excuse the scrappy drawing - cat was sat on the paper

Horizontal rectangles running from January on the left to December on the right.
Exactly as they were set up on the classroom wall in my reception class. The months even have paint splatters on them!

@1lbperweek

Straight line for me!

In a similarish vein - does anyone else think of Monday, Wednesday and Friday as the ‘odd’ days of the week and Tuesday/Thursday as the ‘even’ ... not sure where I stand on Sunday.

Yes!!

Straight line - December on my far left, January far right. Every month equal in size. All the years stacked up on top of each other - current year at eye level.

Diagram

@Timepasses

This is how I visualise it

SEPT OCT NOV DEC
JAN FEB MARCH APRIL
MAY JUNE JULY AUG

I too have tried to explain this to others who think I've gone bonkers.

Yeah same. If I were some mad ruler I'd do the year like this on calendars as three seasons and rename them:

Sep-Dec: School & Christmas
Jan - Apr: Cold Spring
May - Aug: Summer

Visualise it as a circle rather than straight line. And instead of month to month my mind tends to work in chunks of months - so I'll lump jan-March together, then May- end of school, July-sept is summer hols in my mind (even though some weeks are school weeks!?), and then Oct to Dec is one lump of Xmas run up!

I’m reading this thread and nodding, quietly crowing to myself in a mad, cackling way.

I’ve found my people!

@WunWun

What circumstances do you all start visualising the year in anyway? How does it come up?

If I'm thinking ahead, for example - when we might take our summer holiday or when a certain event is happening. If I think about August, I see it visually in its place in my circle (which is actually more like an oval). I can't think of it without picturing it like that.

JFMAMJJASOND but that's the geographer in me from all the graphs i do.

Well this is interesting isn’t it? How differently we see things.
I don’t visualise months as such, more so months being minor details of the season.

So my visualisation is a rectangle split horizontally and vertically into four parts. Each quarter contains a season.

Spring. Summer

Winter. Autumn

But without words, and only pictures. So spring would be pink blossom in trees, bulbs growing, lambs in fields, etc but also when I visualise it I feel the combination of warmth from the sun, yet a cold breeze and I feel excitement, hope and enthusiasm. For some unknown reason my visualisation for spring starts in February 🤷🏻‍♀️

Each season is comprised of images and strong emotions, sensations and drives. Not all are equal in length and don’t correspond with how the months are really classified into seasons. For example the last one and a bit weeks in August would blend into autumn for me. No harsh lines, no words. I’m amazed so many of you visualise words.

Again days of the week are ruled by emotions, and drives to do things. I always see that as linear sometimes left to right sometimes top to bottom.

Sort of a line on a graph that is affected by the seasons. Or maybe a sine wave.

The year starts in spring, when I can start sowing seeds, the whole planting and growing season is a big bulge in the graph that can slide around depending on early/late spring. Then we plummet down through the dark months and rise as the next spring starts.

It’s sort of 3D so at any point you can look across to the same bit of previous years.

Of course Monday, Wednesday, Friday are odd. Odd numbers are better than even (except 2) and primes are better than odd. Squares are bonus points.

It's a 3D wobbly oval shape, I don't have the skills for a diagram but from January it goes up and outwards at about 15 degrees towards March, takes a tight turn back on itself to April, gently curves around May through July then loops down and behind to close up the oval with January. There are colours and degrees of brightness for each month. I do it with numbers too. I assumed for years everyone did until I realised DH had no clue what I was talking about!

I belong to the group of people who struggle with visualisation and all my months are separate and disjointed. I’ve never had a timeline in my head (all days, dates etc are jumbled up and I have to say things out loud to work out where I am). In fact, I have no real concept of time generally

I wonder if it’s possible to learn this stuff somehow or train the brain for it?

Embarrassingly, it took me years to realise that I didn’t understand time (I was one of those chronically either very late or very early people until my 30’s). Now my life only functions through multiple lists, alarms and carefully planned time sequences on paper beforehand.

I’m in awe of you lot - this just seems like black magic to me

Mine is a circle in my head with September at top. No idea why! It’s always like that!

Jan at 6oclock
September at 12oclock

I think it’s because I enjoy September, October and December so they take up a big piece of the circle

Mine is similar to yours @desperatetostaypositive but I'm at the top of a hill at the start, I'm at the bottom during the summer, and by September I'm working my way down.
My days of the week start on Sunday at the top of a hill going down to Saturday at the bottom and then I just flip back up on Sundays

Exactly like yours! We are cyclic creatures after all.