I just noticed the year view of iCal gives me a nice intensity chart of how busy my life has been over the last few years, at least in terms of how many meetings and calendar events  I have.

In 2007 it looks as though my spring was fairly light, but things heat up for Scott and my wedding in early June, and the rest of the year is fairly busy too. I was on sabbatical in the academic year of 2007/8, but still had lots of appointments, it seems. Our daughter was born in April, and the rest of the year was busy in a way not tracked by calendars.

By mid-2010 I was pregnant again, and I wonder whether my pregnancy exhaustion forced me to be a little less busy, because the calendar’s not very busy. I remember I was napping every afternoon and still going to bed by nine pm. Benji was born in February 2010 and you can very clearly see my parental leave – and how things got very busy again when I was back at work in the autumn, although Scott and I were each only working 50% that semester.

2011 and 2012 look pretty steady – you can’t even really spot my summer holidays, which seems a little sad.

This last year very clearly shows the election campaign all spring, though. A lighter summer, and hopefully the next few months will keep some of that nice yellow, as I’m on sabbatical again.

I suppose this isn’t a very useful visualisation, but I had forgotten that all my calendar events for the last several years are actually archived and probably I could get more information out of them than this. It’s also nothing to what dedicated self-trackers are tracking. Here’s a snippet from Chris Dancy’s calendar where he tracks everything he does in great detail.

My simple iCal view won’t yield the kind of self-analysis that Chris Dancy’s calendar will, but it’s interesting because it’s generated entirely without my intending it to be generated – I’m just using my calendar to keep track of my appointments, and when I suddenly click on the Year view, I see my life, portrayed in levels of busy-ness from yellow to red.