Calendars are Windows to the Past
I am a very avid user of calendars; I’ve used Google Calendar to plan out my days since around 2018.
Recently, I’ve been working on a python script that would pull that information from my calendar and tabulate it with the hope of doing data science to it and find something interesting.
Seeing the names of old events marked in the calendar is like looking into the past.
I see the names to events that I haven’t thought about in years: old classes I took in school, vacations, the projects I was working on at the time, hangouts with friends, reminders for the future, random thoughts.
Even the ways in which I use the calendar are baked into the calendar itself. What I chose to write down or leave out and the ways that the event titles are written are a record of how I used to use calendars and how that usage evolved over time.
One thing that is particularly striking to me is seeing old recurring events. Old class schedules defined how I went about my day for months at a time, and now they are all gone and stuck in the past.
My calendar is a sort of hazy memory that I am able to reflect on.