Graph of Desire by Optical Dave
February 17th, 2008 4:44 PM-It is rarely a good idea to start a task that will take obsessive control of your life for a week and start having a relapse of blinding migraines at the same time.
-Logging your desires does not necessarily make you more likely to promptly satsify them. Or, at least, it doesn't make me more likely to.
-Hourly checks begin to grate after a while.
-8x24x7=1388, which is rather more than I bargained for when I came up with this.
-I keep strange hours.
For this task, I thought that I would have to, to satisfactorily create a 'graph' of desire, take readings for all my main desires over a period of time, then plot all of these against each other. Otherwise, surely, it'd be more of an average ratio of my desires, rather than a graph. Thus, for a week, I decided to take values out of ten for eight basic human desires every hour on the hour (or as close as possible to on the hour - stupid school), then plot the results. These desires are as follows:
Food
Drink
Sleep
Fun
Society
Progress/Achievement
Comfort/Contentment
Money
NB: If an hour rolled around when I was asleep, I took a basic template reading for that hour, maximising my desires for sleep and comfort, and minimising all others.
There are 73 separate graphs attending this completion, so if you can wade through them all, I applaud you, and thank you for your commitment. That said, roll on the show!
Mondaychart.jpg

Not that much to see here - spent most of my day in bed with a migraine. Stupid health. Thus, a lot of it is on the basic sleep template, and sleep/comfort are quite high for most of the rest of the time as well.
mondaydrink.jpg

Drink desire across Monday - I suppose it says something that this desire very rarely prompted me to actually get a drink.
mondayprogress.jpg

Desire for actual achievement across Monday - the only major peak was when I realised I had homework to do.
mondaymoney.jpg

Desire for money across Monday - Not really concerned with it, as I was in bed most of the time.
tuesdaychart.jpg

Desires acrosss Tuesday - still ill, still in bed a lot but sleeping less, bored out of my mind.
tuesdaydrink.jpg

Desire for drink across Tuesday - despite logging this, I was still probably not drinking as much as I should.
tuesdaysleep.jpg

Desire for sleep across Tuesday - sleeping in the day less than on Monday, which is probably good.
tuesdayprogress.jpg

Desire for actual progress across Tuesday - again, peaks when I have homework to be doing.
wednesdaysleep.jpg

Desire for sleep across Wednesday - I was only awake for something like 9 hours out of 24, so not that interesting.
wednesdayprogress.jpg

Desire for progress across Wednesday - peaking as I realise that anything would be preferable to staying in bed all day.
wednesdaycomfort.jpg

Desire for comfort across Wednesday - again, mostly maxed out due to illness and sleep.
wednesdaymoney.jpg

Desire for money across Wednesday - rising, and thus a sure sign that I was getting better.
thursdaychart.jpg

Desires across Thursday, by which evening I was largely better, and at least actually wearing real clothes for once, which is surprisingly invigorating after dossing around in pyjamas for days.
thursdayfood.jpg

Desire for food across Thursday - due to one thing or another, dinner didn't turn up until around 10, hence the peak there.
thursdaydrink.jpg

Desire for drink across Thursday - again, probably shouldn't rise that high and not actually prompt me to get a drink.
thursdaysociety.jpg

Desire for society on Thursday, showing that I spent much of the day cold and alone. NB - It wasn't until after I wrote that that I realised it was Valentine's Day on Thursday, and I've come across as feeling really sorry for myself. Still, there you are.
thursdayprogress.jpg

Desire for actual achievement across Thursday, catalysed by desire to get out of bed, desire to task, and receipt of the SFZEROSAT paper.
thursdaymoney.jpg

Desire for money hitting as-yet-unseen peaks across Thursday - again, sure sign of recovery.
fridaychart.jpg

Desires across friday, when I was actually better. That was good, and my desires are more normalised.
fridaysleep.jpg

Desire for sleep across Friday - not sleeping as much as I was, and all in one go. Which is good.
fridayfun.jpg

Desire for fun across Friday - Being in the house alone all day can be somewhat boring.
fridayprogress.jpg

Desire for progress across Friday - seems to be around the same point for most of the day, which is a bit odd.
fridaymoney.jpg

Desire for money across Friday - being out of bed and on the internet gives me access to many more shiny things that I wish to possess.
saturdaychart.jpg

Desires across Saturday - not entirely sure why I was up until 3 in the morning, but I'm sure there was a compelling reason at the time.
saturdaydrink.jpg

Desire for drink across Saturday - lower than usual, which, again, is probably good.
saturdaysociety.jpg

Desire for society across Saturday - Haberley came home for the weekend, so spent lots of time doing things with people.
saturdayprogress.jpg

Desire for progress across Saturday - not that bothered with actually getting anything done.
saturdaycomfort.jpg

Deesire for comfort across Saturday - Bit less better than I thought I was, so this is up quite a bit.
sundaychart.jpg

And this is, somewhat predictably, a graph of my desires across Sunday. I kept being a while late for these checks, which probably has something to do with playing Guitar Hero until half past two in the morning. And going to see films. Ah well.
sundayfood.jpg

Desire for food across Sunday - higher than it usually is due to uncommonly good-smelling food and going to see a film before I could eat it.
sundaydrink.jpg

Desire for drink across Sunday - again, should probably drink enough so that it isn't this constantly high.
sundaysleep.jpg

Desire for sleep across Sunday - a bit odd, as two weeks off school, one of which was spent half of ill and sleeping at weird hours, meaning I am totally jet lagged. Tired in the afternoon, and as I write this now (around midnight the same day) I am really buzzy.
sundaysociety.jpg

Desire for society across Sunday - not sure why it keeps suddenly dropping, but there you are. Sundays still boring.
sundayprogress.jpg

Desire for progress across Sunday - largely due to having almost finished a certain week-long completion.
sundaycomfort.jpg

Desire for comfort across Sunday - again, jet lag has made me want to sit and do nothing, while wanting to do something.
sundaymoney.jpg

Desire for money across Sunday - quite high in the evening due to me actually going out properly and seeing more lovely shinies.
overallchart.jpg

And at last, here it is, the overall graph of desire over my week. But of course, this is impossible to read, I hear you cry. What has been this madman's purpose in leading us all here, only to dash all our hopes of a sensible graph at the end? Has he been distracting us all while his strangely-clad Scandinavian accomplices divert our lives' savings into dubious pyramid schemes? Does he carry a gun? Of course, my adoring public, the answer to all these questions is no. Most of them, at least. Anyway, continue on, and all shall become clear...
averagechart.jpg

This is a bit more readable, no? This is an average of the last seven graphs to give an average day in the life of my desires.
averagefood.jpg

Average desire for food across a day - lower than I thought, and rising around dinnertime. Odd, that.
averagedrink.jpg

Desire for drink across an average day is again, lower than I expected, and dropping oddly around 5ish.
averagesleep.jpg

Desire for sleep across an average day shows I was always asleep between 3 and 6 and 8 and 9 in the morning, and I seem to want a light siesta around 5ish, which would explain the aforementioned drop.
averagefun.jpg

Desire for fun remains pretty much constant over my waking day, dropping only for the aforementioned siesta.
averagesociety.jpg

Desire for society is highest later in the evening, and probably higher than it should be at midnight.
averageprogress.jpg

Desire for concrete achievement hasn't been that high this week - would have been lots higher had I actually been in school.
averagecomfort.jpg

Desire for comfort generally quite high, due to illness, resulting jet lag, and me being a simple creature at heart.
averagemoney.jpg

Desire for money quite low, but staying inside nearly all week will do that. Well, that's it! If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, architectural commissions, or any of the 9,000 names of God to trouble me with, post them on the comment wall. Other than that, thanks for trawling through this insane completion, and I feel that I should offer you something to reward your dedication. But I can't. Still, there you are.
15 vote(s)

Haberley Mead
5
Robert Burt
5
JTony Loves Brains
5
Lizard Boy
5
Lincøln
5
qwerty uiop
5
GYØ Ben
5
Burn Unit
5
Ben Yamiin
5
Zach Malone
5
Adam
5
Tøm
5
Rainy
5
H L
5
genuis at spelling
Terms
(none yet)5 comment(s)
No desire for sex? (Or drugs and rock´roll? Unless all that goes under fun...) How come you get any desire for money while at home? (and why it goes up in the afternoon?).
Lots of work, gets one dizzy. I guess you even considered plotting the desire to drop the task altogether.
Crazy amount of work, nicely done. For those of you who want more broad conclusions, just look at the last 10 pictures or so, they're averages.
@Augustus: Yes, and all my conclusions are in the captions to the last 10 graphs. But read through them all, anyway, It's a rollercoaster ride of inadvisable fun.
But not really.
But do.
@Susy: Well, I only plotted eight because any more would have meant even more graphs. And that would be stupid.
I'm wondering if there were any conclusions you were able to draw from all that info?