The UPS and DOWNS of Everyday Life

The conceptual issues I was trying to track were mostly how content I felt for ten consecutive days in areas such as healthiness, positivity, DCT satisfaction (very important), and weather satisfaction. I divided the categories and color-coded depending on the duration of the mood that I was feeling. I concluded that my busiest days tend to have lower mood ratings in positivity and healthiness. This trend will most likely continue for the rest of the year. On the days when I have free afternoons, I find myself feeling satisfaction from the DCT food as well as the weather. My best guess from this is that I have time to enjoy my food and soak in the day instead of running over the chewing action and worrying about the next thing I have to do.

At the beginning of this project, I had asked myself if my positivity depended on the amount of time I spent with other people or did it depend more heavily on my schedule. Because of the unsteady exposure to other people, I was not able to fully determine whether this was the case. I did, however, find myself feeling better after those brief encounters. Some judgment calls I faced while gathering my data were mostly dealing with determining the hours I had felt a certain mood. I would encounter choices like figuring out if I had felt healthy for ten or eleven hours that day. These choices might have skewed the visual data. I chose to visualize the data in the manner I did because it personally helped me organize my understanding and saw my rating spread out clearly throughout the ten days in the different categories.

If I were to continue this project into the future, I would investigate if my moods revolved around the amount of time I spent with my friends like I previously intended. The difference would be the scheduled time so I can properly determine if those experiences affected them at all. I have found this to be a valuable tool for self-analysis. I had not realized my moods changed that drastically in such a relatively short period of time. I am interested in doing this long-term if possible.

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