My quantified self

Self-knowledge through numbers

I’ve tracked a lot of things in my life. Here are some of the things I am tracking—or have tracked—over time.

The arts

I’ve tracked, on my home page, the lectures, plays, operas, and concerts that I’ve attended. Eventually I started tracking the plays and operas in my blog instead, and for the operas, I often include a copy of the mindmap (e.g., the one for Tosca) I create before going.

A walking challenge

I kept a food diary, tracked my weight, and tracked my commitment to walk for at least 30 minutes throughout 2012, which I called my “Walking Challenge 2012.”

Calendared stuff

I track several frivolous things on my Google calendar, such as:

  • When I change my razor.
  • When I change my oil.
  • When I get a haircut.
  • Which anniversary it is of having rid my home of television sets, which I did in April of 2002.
  • Which anniversary it is of my “coming out,” which I did on April 17, 1994.
Line-dancing and two-stepping

The line dances (both single and partner) that I know.

Grad school course work

My grad school experience, including course name, course code, instructor, semester year, type of class (i.e., application or theory), hours the class counted for, and my grade.

Last wishes

My ever-evolving end-of-life documents and last wishes.

Life-logging

My life—I have a blog entry for every day of my life from January 12, 2004 until January 12, 2014.

Movies

I track the movies that I see, with each title pointing to a blog entry that typically says: what theater, what time, and with whom I saw a movie, a synopsis of it, and in the more recent years, the trailer of it embedded, and then my thoughts and observations about the movie.

Moving & living

The places where I’ve lived in my life.

Physical activity

I use the MyFitnessPal app to log the calories I eat when I’m dieting. I also use it whenever I exercise to track if I did cardio or strength training and how many minutes and calories burned for that session.

Reading

Books that I’ve read as part of three book clubs over the years:

  1. The Nematomes (1991-2001)
  2. The Mostly Social Book Club (1993-present)
  3. A short-lived (1-year) GLBT Book Club, (2002-2003).
Travel

The places to which I’ve traveled—including place, date, lodging, airline taken, and links to respective blog entries I wrote while there. List definitely needs some updating for the most recent years. 🙁