Visualizing Time
Time is a dimension, much like space, from what I understand. Things are forward or backward in time from where an observer sits on that axis. At the moment I am writing this, it is the present - but it is already the future from when I thought of this sentence (a few seconds ago in my brain, before I typed said words). By the time you read this, I will have written this in the past - but it will be the present for you. And then there's that whole time warp that happens if someone goes up into space -- time passes at a different rate for them then for someone that stays on earth. Time is far from constant. We measure it according to rules we have devised - days, hours, minutes, seconds are all agreed upon divisions. But even those rules are changeable -some places have 'daylight savings time' where we all just agree to accept that it is suddenly an hour earlier or an hour later than it would've otherwise been. And then there's leap years, where we just tack on a couple of days to keep the systems going. I can even remember a couple of years where a few seconds were added on new year's day to catch things up.
If you've watched Doctor Who, you've heard the Doctor talk about 'Wibbley-wobbly-timey-whimey' stuff. This is frequently how I experience time.
Circadian rhythms are supposed to tell us to be awake during the day and asleep during the night. I have always been nocturnally oriented, even as a baby. I feel more awake and cognatively functioning after the sun goes down. My ideal time to go to sleep is between 2-3 am; my idea wake time is between 11 am and 12 pm. No matter how much sleep I get the night before, I feel physically sick and 'off'' when I have to function during the morning hours. My entire body fights that time of day with all that it has.
Other than this sleep/wake cycle that is fairly consistent, I have no internal clock. I am not one of those people who can tell you what time it is without looking at a watch. In fact, if I am indoors and can't see the sun or lack thereof, I often have a hard time judging whether it is afternoon or evening. (Morning and night I can tell more because of my levels of energy and how I feel). I am often surprised by the passage of time - I can sit down to do something that is pleasing to me, and find that hours have passed in what seems like minutes. If I am doing something that I find unpleasant, it seems like time crawls and an unbearable pace and will never move on.
I often wonder if this somehow relates to my general difficulties with spacial perceptions. If time is, in fact, a dimension with an axis - is the difficulty I have in perceiving it the same difficulty I have in perceiving my distance from objects in space? Is my tendency to forget what day or month it is related to my difficulty in remembering where shapes I have just been shown lie on a grid? Perhaps because of this, I have a fascination with time keeping devices. I love to change the calendar every month because it is a physical reminder of where we are sitting on that axis, and it helps make time a little more real for me.
My therapist recently recommended a particular clock to me, which I have purchased and will be trying out. It is a timekeeper clock - a visual clock with no hands. You pull a big red circle around the clock, to indicate how much time you would like to track - anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. The red pie shape shows how much time you have remaining. Instead of ticking, the red circle slowly disappears back into the clock, to indicate the passage of time. With this I can track the ten minutes I want to spend on visualization exercises without getting lost in my own head for hours, or the 20 minutes I want to spend cleaning without it seeming like an eternity I will never escape from.
Will it also help me relate better visually - will it affect my perception for shapes and their location in space as a result? It'll be interesting to see.
If you've watched Doctor Who, you've heard the Doctor talk about 'Wibbley-wobbly-timey-whimey' stuff. This is frequently how I experience time.
Circadian rhythms are supposed to tell us to be awake during the day and asleep during the night. I have always been nocturnally oriented, even as a baby. I feel more awake and cognatively functioning after the sun goes down. My ideal time to go to sleep is between 2-3 am; my idea wake time is between 11 am and 12 pm. No matter how much sleep I get the night before, I feel physically sick and 'off'' when I have to function during the morning hours. My entire body fights that time of day with all that it has.
Other than this sleep/wake cycle that is fairly consistent, I have no internal clock. I am not one of those people who can tell you what time it is without looking at a watch. In fact, if I am indoors and can't see the sun or lack thereof, I often have a hard time judging whether it is afternoon or evening. (Morning and night I can tell more because of my levels of energy and how I feel). I am often surprised by the passage of time - I can sit down to do something that is pleasing to me, and find that hours have passed in what seems like minutes. If I am doing something that I find unpleasant, it seems like time crawls and an unbearable pace and will never move on.
I often wonder if this somehow relates to my general difficulties with spacial perceptions. If time is, in fact, a dimension with an axis - is the difficulty I have in perceiving it the same difficulty I have in perceiving my distance from objects in space? Is my tendency to forget what day or month it is related to my difficulty in remembering where shapes I have just been shown lie on a grid? Perhaps because of this, I have a fascination with time keeping devices. I love to change the calendar every month because it is a physical reminder of where we are sitting on that axis, and it helps make time a little more real for me.
My therapist recently recommended a particular clock to me, which I have purchased and will be trying out. It is a timekeeper clock - a visual clock with no hands. You pull a big red circle around the clock, to indicate how much time you would like to track - anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. The red pie shape shows how much time you have remaining. Instead of ticking, the red circle slowly disappears back into the clock, to indicate the passage of time. With this I can track the ten minutes I want to spend on visualization exercises without getting lost in my own head for hours, or the 20 minutes I want to spend cleaning without it seeming like an eternity I will never escape from.
Will it also help me relate better visually - will it affect my perception for shapes and their location in space as a result? It'll be interesting to see.