Thursday, November 08, 2007

The Blur of the Moment

Today I am somewhat pensive. Don't know why really. I guess I have these moments where it dawns on me that quite a bit of time has gone by without my really realizing it (three months almost since I arrived in Princeton). And I try to remember what I did during that time. Sometimes I can remember, other times not. It seems more frequently nowadays that moments just tend to blend together, making it hard to single out special moments or time posts that really stand out. Don't know if that happens to any of you. I guess when I was younger (not that I would claim to be old :)), I could still identify highlights from my week or the month or whatever time period I was thinking of. Now, I can't do that quite as well. And it's not because I am not having a good time or don't have happy moments. I do. In fact, I have felt pretty uniformly happy since I arrived here. So why is it that everything just becomes one big blur? Is it because my life is more dynamic now than it used to be? Or because my memory is weaker? Or because I tend to have more things on my mind at any given moment in time? I really do wonder about that sometimes. And would love to hear some theories.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would say a little bit of everything you mentioned: sensory overload combined with memory saturation. The big picture dominates the smaller details.

DJ said...

hmmm...good way to put it. so in a way i'm seeing the trend in the graph but not all the different distinct points on the graph (sorry, must sound like a weird analogy but that's what regression analysis does to you;)) so you see the trend of being happy/not happy etc but can't necessarily tie it back to single moments in time.

Anonymous said...

good analogy,
beware of heteroscedasticity though :)

DJ said...

ummmm, right:) i'll make sure to use a robust formula