This is going to be a bit of strange blog post, but I’ll see how it turns out.
As I mentioned in my last blog post, I kept a diary for a year. All of it is in text files, sitting in a folder on my hard drive, backed up on various hard drives and in the cloud.
So now what do I do with it?
Well, it’s been handy to look up names of people I’ve met, or places I’ve been, but as time passes that will be less useful.
In 10 years time I could read through the whole thing, and see how much of a dick I was, but there’s no way I’m going to read through the whole thing now.
But I want to see how much I can learn about my life when I was aged 30 years old. So here goes!
First step: combine all text files into one. I’ve done that already, using Automator on OSX. It’s handy for stuff like this.
Step two: write a python script that filters out all punctuation, line breaks, tab breaks and spaces.
This leaves me with a huge list of over 200,000 words.
Step three: modify script so it counts up how many times I’ve used each word.
Easy!
Total number of unique words in the diary: 9,608. Is that a lot? I guess it’s a pretty varied vocabulary.
The top 10 most common words:
10449 i 9310 the 7244 and 7115 to 5633 a 2871 it 2705 in 2573 of 2327 my 2280 but
Boring!
Step four: import into a spreadsheet where I can scroll through the words and tag each one as either a Name, a Place, a kind of Food, an Action or an Object. The vast majority of words are none of these, of course.
This is more time consuming, of course. I decided to ignore all words I only used once or twice each, as they make up about two thirds of the 9,608 words. And I’m just not clever enough at python scripting to do anything like this automagically (and certainly not while unconnected from the internet) so I tagged each word by hand.
The results?
Let’s start with food-related words. I’ll share the top 24.
267 food 227 breakfast 126 dinner 97 pizza 47 burger 47 eat 44 drinks 42 lunch 34 eating 31 tea 30 drinking 25 shots 21 pasta 21 tasty 18 cake 17 mustafas 16 cheese 16 chocolate 16 hungry 16 milk 16 yummy 13 coffee 11 crepe 10 parliamento
I think this is quite educational. I mention “pizza” more times than I mention “lunch”. This doesn’t mean I ate pizza more times than I ate lunch, but I guess pizza is more important for me to record in my diary than one meal of the day.
Burger probably ranks so high because of the 8 Bacon Cheeseburgers in 8 Days project I undertook last September. Since then I’ve eat more burgers than I normally would do in a year, mainly to see if I can find a tastier burger. And, of course, with such a project in mind I’ll write about it in my diary more often.
Mustafa’s Hänchen Gemuse Kebab? The best kebab place in Berlin which happens to be right on my street? 17 visits in the last year, I’m guessing. And 10 trips to Pizza Parliamento, my favorite pizza restaurant near my apartment.
“Tasty” and “yummy” pop up more than I would have thought. I guess “yummy” is a word I’d use more in a diary than normal conversation.
Next set of results:
Places!
139 berlin 127 park 122 bar 71 apartment 71 hotel 65 ejc 61 hot-tub 52 airport 47 gym 41 prinsendam 40 london 39 bookshop 37 cabin 32 hill 27 cafe 26 boat 25 theatre 24 bank 24 ubahn 21 port
Berlin wins, of course. But there’s a lot to learn about me here. “Park” means Victoria Park in Berlin, where I go to juggle every day when the weather is good.
“Bar” is self explanatory, right?
“Hot-tub”? When the weather is good in Berlin I go hang out in the park. When the weather is good while I’m on a cruise ship, and even when it isn’t, I usually spend an hour per day in the hot-tup and pool. On a sea day I hang out while the sun sets, otherwise I hang out while we sail out of the port.
“EJC” isn’t just a place, but an event, which I mention throughout the year as I was part of the organizing team.
“Gym” in NO WAY means a place where I get fit. Instead it means the gymnasiums at juggling conventions.
The “Prinsendam” is a ship that I perform on six or seven times a year. And other words like “airport”, “cabin, “boat”, “hotel”, “ubahn”, and “port” just show how much travel is a big part of my life.
Next results?
Activities/Verbs. A top 20:
772 went 568 show 565 think 441 work 427 juggling 385 going 265 chatted 265 said 259 sleep 244 make 239 played 193 guess 160 chatting 157 met 152 tried 146 ate 146 feel 146 remember 141 play 139 found
This seems pretty standard, I guess. And saying “I guess” might explain why I do so much guessing.
Looking further down the list, I notice “116 sex”. I know for a fact I didn’t have sex 116 times!
And then “97 shower”. I know for a fact I had a shower more than 97 times!
“Combat” is mentioned 90 times. And “juggle” (as opposed to “juggling”) another 83 times, and “juggle” 80 times.
Way down the list is “uploaded” at 47 mentions, but that’s high above “downloaded” at 23 mentions. I guess this shows that uploading new content like podcasts and photography is more important. Or something.
Strangely “photography” only gets 68 mentions. I thought this would be higher, but it’s just down to word choice, I guess. That brings me on to the next set of results…
Things, objects, nouns, etc. The top 20:
375 bed 298 photos 267 food 222 room 214 video 205 ship 197 music 183 internet 183 song 168 club 152 book 143 podcast 139 stage 130 head 129 shows 110 camera 109 game 109 songs 100 guitar 99 facebook
See? Photography is very important to me. So is music and performing, and reading, and my online life.
I’m not sure what else I need to mention about this list of words.
And on to the final set…
People!
This time, to be a bit more inclusive, I’ll list the top 30.
279 Julianne 242 kim-nga 104 luke 69 kissha 68 pola 62 daniel 54 declan 49 olga 48 eva 44 karo 43 alex 39 doreen 37 flo 35 jeff 33 dj 33 nathan 33 scott 31 rym 29 john 28 billy 28 kyle 26 christine 26 jesse 26 tim 25 jochen 24 david 23 nat 22 corinna 22 jessica 22 jj 22 lee
And let’s just start at the top. “Juliane” is, of course, my current girlfriend. I met her for the first time at the start of June, so she wins by quite a number of mentions in under three months worth of diary.
Second place is “Kim-Nga” who was my girlfriend last year. We were together from October to early January, so about three months again. Though “together” is funny word for a long distance relationship.
Third place is “Luke” which is me. This is because I addressed many diary entries to my future self, saying “Hey Future Luke, reading back over this diary, here’s what you did today. This is reflected in the song I wrote last September called Future Luke.
Kissha is friend in Berlin who I kinda dated in the spring. Pola is my ex-ex-girlfriend who still pops up in my life quite often. But in a good way, as we are still friends.
And then as I look down I see friends I hang out with in Berlin, people I’ve spent time with on cruise ships, people who have stayed at my place, people I’ve been to juggling conventions with, and people I met last year in New York.
Some people don’t feature much in my diary though, even though they feature quite large in my life. I’m not sure why I didn’t mention them more.
This includes:
1. Girls I met in Berlin, with whom I hoped to begin some kind of relationship, but for some reason it didn’t work out. So I’d think about them quite a bit, and mention them every now and then in my diary, but wouldn’t make it in every time I thought about them, only when I met them, or planned to meet them.
2. People I spent just a few days with on a single trip, and might have changed the direction of my life in a big way, but following that I didn’t meet them again.
3. People whom I chat with on an almost daily basis online, who are just part of my every day life but I don’t “do” anything with them worth writing about in my diary.
And then some people on this list are there for negative reasons. “Lee” was a very annoying guest entertainer I had the displeasure of spending three weeks with on a cruise in the spring. In fact, I didn’t spend much time with him, I actively avoided him, but the other entertainers kept getting annoyed with him, and all I heard from them were complaints.
Actually, I think Lee is the only negative placement in the above list.
Finally, in the 365 days I was aged 30, I had sex with 5 girls. I’ll not say who they were, but I’m glad they all made the top 30 above.
That’s it! This is such a weirdly abstract way to analyze ones life, I’m not sure if it is helpful or unhelpful. I don’t think there’s anything else I need to share about my life for a while.
Last note:
The longest “word” in the diary came out as “long-distance-non-dating-friend-with-no-benefits”. This is a specially invented term for Robyn!