RD And The Experiments

I told you here about one of my newer schemes; that of drawing myself a little five minute mindmap every morning as a means of illustrating and noting down the happenings of the previous day. Funnily enough, as I've just looked at that post to chuck the link in above I've noticed that it's one of those slightly rare species of posts that received no comments at all.

It's now about three months since I started it and I feel that I should report my findings to you.

The first is that it has taken me a small but definite amount of discipline to keep doing the mindmaps. Although it's relatively easy and it has proved to be a good way of documenting my day without incurring the time involved in writing a "proper" journal or diary entry, one that uses full sentences and goes into detail about everything, there has been discipline involved.

Most weekdays, when I'm at work, it's easier as I've made it into a part of my morning routine. But at weekends there have been times when I've got to about five in the afternoon and suddenly remembered that I haven't drawn the previous day's mindmap. At that point there's a tendency to think "fuck it I'll do two of them tomorrow morning", but I know that's when I'll start to wonder what happened on which day and I'll lose some of the momentum, so I kind of have to push myself through a very small mental barrier of sorts.

One of the many beauties of mindmaps, one of the reasons I'm such a fan, is that one can put as much or as little detail as required into them. My main objective in these has been to put brief outlines of the events of each day. Some days have been busier than others, some have been full to the brim with juicy bits and pieces and others have been quieter.

So far they've given me a better sense of appreciation of each day. I know this might sound a bit arsey but it actually seems that they've given me a better appreciation of life and of being itself. I now spend those few minutes consciously thinking about my day, of what its events meant to me, how I might have reacted, how others might have reacted, what I learned, what I was pleased or pissed off about.

I haven't reread the mindmaps that much, but there have been a few moments when I've quickly browsed their contents and found them to be quite sparkling, once I've got through the hassle of trying to decipher my own handwriting. What I mean is that, with a glance, I've been taken back to that day. Rather than each day being a wishy washy one that happened I can look and recall the structure of the day better, which things went with each other on the day.

You know, so it's not just that I vaguely recall having a meeting with you and David Blacker last Tuesday, it's that I can recall that we had that meeting but in the morning I spoke with K about her school report as well as felt excited about buying a new pair of skinny jeans (only joking T).

Overall?

A good idea so far, one that I'm definitely going to continue with.

Good luck to Sri Lanka tomorrow too. I hope to be writing good celebratory things on Saturday's mind map!