Biorhythms & Mood Rings

Three blog posts in three days, this is kind of a record for me.  

I felt compelled to add a more civil and less sarcastic posting today lest people truly worry about my mental state.  I really am OK.  The postings of the past two days were definitely different in tenor and tone.  They were definitely sarcastic and definitely on the edge.  What edge?  I think they were on the edge of humor and anger.   I read both postings more often than I do most.  I even asked others to read them to see if I needed to beseech my doctor for a prescription of valium or whatever “mother’s little helper” they are doling out these days.  My favorite response:  "You sound a little angry there Sparky.”  

Am I angry?  If so, angry at what?  Life?  My lot in it?  No, not really.  Having to work?  That is reality.  Too many people dying or ill this year?  Probably it all came to head when an old friend learned in a November posting, Mid-Term Elections, that I had voted for Obama.  He grilled me over this like a district attorney in cross-examination.  I really did not enjoy that.

Maybe it is just the natural ebb and flow of emotions or the sinusoidal fluctuations of self-esteem, outlook, or brain wave patterns.  This line of thinking reminds me of the old notion of biorhythms.   They were quite the rage in the 1970s.    I do not hear about them at all lately.  I thought they were kind of hokey back then but have never forgotten about the idea of them.  I loved how people took them so seriously and, as the fad wore thin, they dropped biorhythms for whatever was next.   I believe it was that I'm OK, You're an Idiot thing.

With the power of the World Wide Web at my disposal, I was able to read about the history of biorhythms and even found several biorhythm calculators. 

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biorhythm:

Biorhythm is an attempt to predict various aspects of a person's life through simple mathematical cycles. The notion has no more predictive power than chance, and is now considered a classic example of pseudoscience by modern science.

It is kind of funny, I thought science was pretty modern back in the 1970’s.  It is all a matter of perspective.  

Biorhythms were established by a patient of Sigmund Freud’s.  Apparently they became popular in the 1970s either to balance off the popularity of disco or maybe because the emergence of scientific calculators and the first personal computers which allowed the biorhythm calculators to be accessible to more people.  One Bernard Gittelson wrote books and had a company that sold biorhythm calculators and such.  

Upon finding free biorhythm calculators on line, I could not help myself.  I called my Mother to get my exact time of birth and entered my birth date and time as instructed.  The results:

Physical               -5%

Emotional           -27%

Intellectual         +88%

Overall:             +19%

So I could make the case that I am physically and emotionally down.   Yet, intellectually I am keenly aware of this which, in turn, explains the frustration and angst.  It is so simple.  No wonder I have been sarcastic and surly.

Maybe I am truly a child of the 70’s.   Wow.  This has been cathartic.  I am feeling better already and my mood ring is now a lovely sky blue.