My Life, displayed 30 different ways

When Jenn turned 30, she wrote up 30 things that she had learned about herself over her lifetime.  I can't compete with Jenn's writing skills (really, you should re-read her excellent post), but I wanted to do something to think about my life at 30 as well.  So, I decided to do it pure Ben-style: with graphs!  You are welcome to snicker at the nerdiness of graphing your life in 30 different ways, but I've actually had a great time doing it, and it's been an interesting to way to think carefully about where I've been, how I live my life now, and how I view the world.  Forcing myself to put actual numbers on some of these aspects of my life was actually eye-opening in some ways.  And, it was definitely entertaining.  Hopefully it will be for you too.

Some of you may be wondering whether I've been accumulating data for the past 30 years with this idea in mind.  No, I haven't.  Where possible, I actually went and found the actual numbers to create the graphs--I really did go into our Netflix account to look at what movies we watch, for example.  Some of the data comes from memory (e.g.: airlines miles), so it won't be perfectly accurate.  And, some of the data is just guesswork.

So, without further comment, here is my life, past and present, displayed in 30 different ways:

1. Weight

2. Church Callings

3. Gmail Account

4. Gender Balance

5. Places Lived

6. Musical Instruments

7. Ski Trips

8. Books

9. Relationship Status

10. School

11. Employment

12. Introversion

13. Average Day

Blue: Solitary work; Red: Interacting with others

Blue: Necessities; Green: Caring for kids; Orange: Personal Enjoyment

14. Conversation Topics

15. Diet

16. Careers

17. Websites

Note: Lower numbers mean they are more highly ranked

18. Research Topics

19. Similarity to immediate family members

20. Distance from Utah

21. Air Travel

22. Political Views

23. Phone Calls

24. Father Responsibilities

25. Harvard Classmates

26. To Bed & Wake Up Times

27. Daily Commute

28. Movies

29. Money

30. Speed