How do you visualize the calendar in your mind?

huh?

By looking over my laptop to where it is hung on the wall.

I see it as a 3d model, of boxes and colorful icons. It kind of swirls around. Kind of like the Gibson is Hackers

clicks iCal

I see it like Apple sees it.

I picture the year as a horizontal oval. Spring is the shorter curved side on the left, summer runs across the long side on the top, then fall curves around to winter. I think spring and fall are the shorter sides because they’ve always seemed less distinct and generally shorter, especially since i’m from california, where there’s only two seasons: wet and dry.

@hannah: Your calendar sounds like the orbit of the earth around the sun.

AstroChuck, are you synaesthetic? I’m not, but a synaesthetic friend of mine has some very specific visual representations associated with dates and seasons.

As for me, I just visualize it as a dumb old calendar sigh

Forgive my ignorance. Is that when you taste color or smell sounds? I’m too lazy to look it up. If so, no, I’m not.

I can visualize days of the week better. It’s sort of a mental planner.

as a flat piece of paper with boxes on it

Wow! More than a year has gone by and now a new response to the first question I ever asked on Fluther. In fact, I think of all the questions I’ve asked here, this one was my favorite. Too bad nobody else felt that way.

THANKYOU FOR ASKING THIS QUESTION :) (last year or not)
And I hope it’s a serious one, because it’s one I think about fairly often!
I was just discussing this with one of my friends the other day. She just sort of looked at me, and I was like “oh, nevermind’.

I see it as like a timeline that actually has the whole history of life on it, except the nature of the line is like it’s contents… the farther back, the smaller and thinner, like a road in the distance ( I guess it’s like a 3-d timeline in that way.. kind of like those new gps maps) and then as it nears the present, the road is wider and wider. In the future, it’s really vast, and open, and I just see like a mass of things, all jumbled up. And it’s lighter colored in the future. As opposed to the past which is sorta like a deep maroon.
I think i sound like i’m on drugs

For me there’s not a clear visual shape, but there is a strong idea of location or position associated with each day of the week. This is the best I was able to come up with drawing it out. The days of a typical work week come more or less one after the other, but Thursday has a slight bend to it, and Friday has already begun shifting upward. Saturday is on top of the other days, and so is Sunday, but Sunday curves downward slightly.

The months of the year are arranged in a similar way. Here’s my view of it. The first six months are linear, but June begins to shift downward, and July is below it. August is below that, and quite a bit further along the return loop. November starts to turn up, and December is on the rightmost side of the oval.

edit: My sister just walked into the room, so I asked her this question. She explained it exactly the way I was thinking, and she was so surprised when I showed her the diagram I had made.

Great question! I read about it in your interview; I hope that doesn’t cheapen my answer for you. I thought I was the only one who ‘visualized’ it at all. I see calendar pages linked end to end floating in space. I also see the alphabet and numbers the same way. Like a letter and number train.

I do have synesthesia. I wonder if that means something.

I don’t think I have ever actually visualized a calendar, but if I did I guess it would look like a regular old wall calendar.

I should probably try and explain my “inverted closed horseshoe” vision of the calendar.
First we start the year with January in the lower right side and start moving up. After we hit April we begin curving upwards to the left. May rests at the very beginning of the curve. At both sides of the crest lie June and July, both still on a curve, just near the top though. After the curve downward (we’re on the left side now) we reach August on the side. After that we are at the bottom moving straight across, left to right, with September through December., which ends in the right hand corner. 
Even though I see January through April on the straight side on the right and just August on the left side I don’t visualize it lopsided. That’s just the abstracted way I see things. Weird, I guess.

For me Jan Feb and March go straight up. Then April makes a left turn. It continues horizontally until about Aug then they slope slowly down until Dec.

I imagine the yearly calendar physically, too! Woo!

For me, each month is a square. They all join together to form a bigger square, with four blocks to a side. The top side of the big square is made of November, December, January and February. Then directly below the February block is the March block, then the April block, and then May. Then to the left of May is June, July and August. Above August is September and then October, connecting back up to the November block. I always used to imagine the calendar this way when I was younger, thinking about how much longer I had until Christmas or until summer vacation, that sort of thing. And I still do it – I actually drew this out and have it taped above my desk, and I’m crossing off months as they happen, counting down till the end of this academic year (I’m in a one-year Masters’ program).

I imagine a lot of things visually, I find it very helpful. Weeks I imagine like a normal calendar though, the days being seven blocks in a row. I even imagine the hours in each day as being blocks that I fill with something or other. How boring of me, all these blocks!

I see the months and the days of the week together. the days of the week are in a circle lying flat and the months run in a circle up and down and all are box shaped. I dont think there is any color really. They both are intertwined together if any of that makes sence.

I also see it as a horseshoe with the curve at the bottom. January starts at the right tip and it ends with December on the left tip. I often think about this topic and appreciate your question!

Very fascinating for me. I had thought we all saw things the same.

I visualize a year in a circle of squares corresponding to the hours on the face of a clock. January is at 1o’clock and December at 12. Each square looks like a traditional calendar. Very interesting that several people commented that January started at the bottom of an inverted horseshoe on the right to December at the far end of the left. That makes no sense to me LOL.

For some reason I visualize years of the 20th century in a series of vertical columns arranged along a horizontal line, one column for each decade Headed by the first year of that decade. I see the years in the 21st-century differently, starting out with the year 2000 and just descending vertically to the present date and visualize 2021 moving forward linearly but now along a horizontal line to the right. Since I’m 70 that line doesn’t go too far LOL.

Weird , we all see things differently. I am also a bit on the spectrum so I visualize pretty much everything as a picture.

I see the months as if they were a road beneath my feet and stretching out in perspective in front of me. Tomorrow is down, like the step below me if I were descending a staircase, and yesterday is above and behind, like the step above.

At some point ahead, they seem to ascend and wrap around, as if the stairs passed beneath a mezzanine and a future set of months were laid out along the mezzanine, at right angles to the stairs.

Oh, and I should mention that they are all present in specific colors: the months, the days, the letters and numbers. An effect of synesthesia.

I was asked earlier if I might have synesthesia and I answered no. But since that time I’ve learned much more about it and I firmly believe I have ordinal-linguistic personification, which is a form of synesthesia.