I just found something out about myself that I had no idea I had, as I thought everyone was like me! My boyfriend and I were talking one night last week, and somehow got on the subject of the concept of time. I told him that Thanksgiving Day was like 5:23pm on my mental time calendar and he looked at me like I was nuts and bust out laughing, saying "What ARE you talking about"?!!!
So I proceeded to explain to him my mental construct of time (which I have known in my mind ever since I can remember - I used to draw it in journals trying to figure it out). Anyway, I explained to him how a year in my mind is like a oval-ish shape with Dec. 25 at the very bottom and July 4th at the top, its the movement goes clock-wise through the months but in a linear convoluted way that is hard to explain. A week as a totally different look, as does a day or a minute in my mind. He's just looking at me blankly as I tried to describe all this. Later that day he emails me an article about a rare form of synesthesia in which your mind sees shapes and patterns for the concept of time, so I looked into it further and was amazed to read about people that experience time in such a visual, spatial context the same ways as I do! I was laughing as different people described their particular shapes because finally I found people that I could relate to! I honestly thought everyone did that and over the years I would ask my friends "how they saw time" and most would look at me strangely...
Anyway, it tickles me to no end that this "thing" I do has a name! Who else here experiences the concept of time like this?
I should add that I do not have any other forms of synesthesia; I don't "taste" or "hear" colors, etc....