does it always have to be a ring? I've always imagined a year vertically/top down. Each month a slice. Also alphabet letters in color. Each letter having a distinct color.
I was deep into synesthesia stuff when I worked at UCSD and had a friend participate in an experiment at VS Ramachandran's lab and one of the neat things is that a lot of the commonalities are culturally or temporally specific.
Many of the people with numeric synesthesia use a ring because they resemble CLOCKS! 1-12 is a common pattern and most people with synesthesia that grew up with this kind of clock have the same pattern for the first 12 numbers, but after that they tend to have their own patterns they develop.
This is true for other forms of synesthesia as well, there's not a single "way" but more a categorical set of shared characteristics, usually derived from their surroundings, as this isn't something people get taught to manage or take advantage of, but some folks naturally do. It's truly fascinating.
It sounds like you grew up with more calendars than round clocks, or an agenda/diary of some sort, or maybe it comes from something else - think about it, I'd love to know if you can place it!
It definitely sounds like you have some form of synesthesia.
So couple of things might have helped shape the way I assign colors or structure to things. At least that's my theory - For numbers and letters, I think that might've come from pre-school alphabet or numbers book. I've always pictured the letter 'A' as always being yellow. B was always red , then C was green, D was orange , E as kind of purple, F as pink and so on. For numbers Zero was always white, 1 being black, 5 being bluish.
For time scale - I grew up in the late 80. So planning and scheduling was always done on a wall mounted calendar in my parent's kitchen or mom's day planner. So I think the concept of a year/month/hours in a day where always superimposed in my head as either a grid pattern for the month like any other calendar , or up/down rectangular scale for hours in a day or clock. Same goes on how I visualize a year. Priors years are just vertical block on the left of the current year block. Future years were on the right of the current year. Same for decades. Direction & distance were always like a measuring ruler going either left or right.
That's fascinating, thanks so much for sharing, definitely sounds like synesthesia - I've known several people who've had various types of synesthesia, though none that were alphanumerical, it's always fascinating to learn how wildly different people's experiences are with just... living :)
Do you have any interesting color overlaps between letters and numbers? I'm noticing that the fifth letter E (I'm assuming english, apologies if not!) is of a similar shade (purple / blue) as the number five!
One of the canonical tests to "prove" synesthesia is real involved putting a bunch of 5s and Ss randomly on a page and those with synesthesia could quickly distinguish between the two. It's always fascinating that the shape of the letter/number wasn't part (necessarily) of the color sense, and that they still stayed distinct, so just curious if you've noticed any overlaps/influences between letters and numbers or if they tend to tickle a totally different color sense.
Yes. Definately some overlap. Just as you stated, the number 3. It's similar color as letter E. A Purple-maroon shade. Also S and 5 are somewhat similar. Both are blue-ish. No overlap on number 6. Its always light blue. Same for 7, its always green.
Finally 8 and H are both brown and oddly exact same color. Not sure if its because H is also the 8th letter in the alphabet.
I think I do. As far back as I can remember - I've always seen numbers & letters in vivid color. As well as things like calendar/datetime, distance and direction in some type of geometric shape. I though that was how everyone perceived the world. It wasn't until much later when I came across an article on synesthesia that learned that it was actually a thing.
