Sam Strasser

I had an idea for a website that would let you reflect on your day.  I call it todaywas, and the idea would be to say, very quickly, if you had a good or a bad day.  You would of course be able to look at what you had entered over time with cool visual representations like charts or graphs.  I could also envision features like correlating your mood with others’, maybe by geographic proximity, similarity of age, or gender, or job profession – really anything.  It could work well as a Facebook app too.

I thought of the idea, oddly enough, yesterday, which was horrible   briefly in the middle of the day I was happy, maybe because I was talking to my sister, who seemed happy, or maybe because the sun showed itself.  Still, for most of the day, I was unhappy.  I deleted a whole bunch of files that I needed for work, messed up our server and generally made a mess of things.  When I got home, I was so pissed I went for a run.  That should come as a shock to anyone who knows me, since I almost never run.  That’s just how pissed I was.  I was too pissed even to write about my app idea.

Today, though, was daytime to yesterday’s night.  I managed to undo all my mistakes, after some effort.  In doing so, though, I identified a more general and important problem with my methods, and I fixed that as well.  At the beginning of the week I made a to do list, and I’m making great progress on that.  I’m feeling very happy right now.

The temporariness of feelings, whether happy or sad, always surprises me.  During those dark moments yesterday, I tried to recall the sunny feeling from earlier that day, but failed.  Conversely, nothing could possibly bring me down right now.  Buddhists apparently have figured this out, but I’m not there yet.  Maybe my app will help out.

It’s not one of my best ideas, but I do like the idea of not getting caught up in every fleeting emotion that passes me by.  It’s almost too social for me to really like it myself, since it sounds kind of like all those other “what can we make that fits into the social model” apps you encounter all the time.  I rest assured that that’s not how I came up with it, though, so I don’t feel so bad.