I have noticed, in the past ten years or so, that I have a tendency to have strong but often frustratingly vague intuitions. This isn't a particularly abnormal thing, lots of people get the occasional intuitive nudging, but lately I've started trying to a) figure out what I'm feeling in as much detail as possible, b) write it down in advance, and c) see how it corresponds to reality. Please note that this is not me saying I believe in a gift of prophecy or anything of the sort. I'm not setting myself up as an oracle. It is just an effort to record my experiences more thoroughly, because that honestly feels less crazy than talking about it after the fact and knowing I kinda saw it coming.
However, so far, the few times I've bothered to record it, it has turned out to be rather alarmingly apt. Like, one week before the first case of COVID was identified in China, I was talking in a comment thread on Facebook about how I felt like something huge was coming, but natural not manmade, yet mostly affecting humans. I specified that I thought it would start "not here (meaning Korea), but probably somewhere in Asia, maybe China," that it would spread around and be too diffuse to track completely, that it felt like the segment of the globe containing Africa, Australia, and New Zealand was probably not going to be the source, and likely wasn't going to be as strongly affected by whatever it was, and that it would end up hurting the USA a lot. I said that I felt Korea would be affected comparatively little, getting echoes but not really being swamped by it, and more affected by the systemic fallout. And I finished off by speculating that what I was sensing might be extreme weather patterns, but I didn't think they'd be the right kind of disruptive for what I was feeling, so it was more likely a plague, because "we're about due for one."
I really wish I'd gotten that one wrong.
But, looking back a few months later, that was sufficiently accurate that it was downright eerie, and it was really the first time I had ever chased a Bad Feeling to try to get a fuller sense of it enough to explain what it was. Ever since then, I've been trying to do that more any time I get a strong sense of things. I don't think this detailed intuition is some sort of magical psychic phenomenon or anything, though, I think it's just being good at pattern sensing, and taking in a lot more raw data than I actively realize I'm taking in.
So please, keep all of that in mind when I say the following:
For the past month or so, since mid-September at least, I've been having A Bad Feeling about the end of October. When I try to pin it down, Halloween feels like it's too late, but the 29/30 is seeming likely. It feels like whatever it is will be the actions of people, not a natural phenomenon. And it feels like it will be relatively swift and contained, like a bright flash of lightning in a bottle, followed by smaller ripples like tiny dark storm clouds full of lightning. In my mental image there, I'm picturing the storm as being in the bottom of a jar that just flashed incandescent, and now the flashes are going upwards through the clouds towards the top of the jar, but not actually emerging from the cloud cover. I'm thinking a single event, with weeks or maybe a few months at the most worth of ripples. I don't THINK those ripples will directly spread outside the US, but history is a system not a line, so it's possible this will still put some stretch in the fabric around US/foreign relations. It's just not the primary thing. It doesn't feel like a complete disaster (though after the clusterfuck that has been 2020, what would?), but it is still a big bright flash that would be identifiable later as a distinct moment of importance.
After the COVID prediction, I've started trying to really hone in on where stuff feels like it will be coming from, and my sense of the map on this feeling is that there are two probable hotspots, but they're still quite large targets and I can't get any more accurate a sense of them... one is in the Arizona/New Mexico/Colorado region, and one is in western New York/western Pennsylvania/northeastern Ohio region. Those circles are really far too big to be helpful, several hundred miles in diameter, which is frustrating, but they are smaller than fully an eighth of the globe, which is about as much as I had the first time I tried this, so perhaps the now tighter circles actually do represent progress. Or perhaps I'm just full of shit. ^^'
However, lately this sense of impending bang has been receding. I don't know if that's because I already listened to it and wrote it down and have been talking about it with people, so now those patterns no longer interest my distractible ADHD brain, or if it's because it's no longer a good fit for the data I've taken in since then. So I am recording the whole thing here, because I suspect it will at least be an entertaining curiosity for a few of us here.
(Also upcoming, a deep dark wave of despair starting around three weeks into November, but I don't have a strong sense of if that's just personal or will be more general, or if it has any specific cause, and I feel like I have no sense of what follows. I can still speculate about the farther future, of course, I just don't actually feel anything about it yet.)
Anywho... does anyone else get strong intuitions about things sometimes? What do you do about it when you do? How have you been coping with the rollercoaster that is 2020?
Intuitions
- Imp-Chan
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Intuitions
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- Graybeard
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Re: Intuitions
Impy, you have just described the two areas of the US where we have close relatives. I devoutly hope you're wrong. Or are we the incipient disasters?Imp-Chan wrote:After the COVID prediction, I've started trying to really hone in on where stuff feels like it will be coming from, and my sense of the map on this feeling is that there are two probable hotspots, but they're still quite large targets and I can't get any more accurate a sense of them... one is in the Arizona/New Mexico/Colorado region, and one is in western New York/western Pennsylvania/northeastern Ohio region. Those circles are really far too big to be helpful, several hundred miles in diameter, which is frustrating, but they are smaller than fully an eighth of the globe, which is about as much as I had the first time I tried this, so perhaps the now tighter circles actually do represent progress. Or perhaps I'm just full of shit. ^^'
The "hot spot" in the AZ/NM/CO region, Covid-wise, has really kinda happened already. The Four Corners region, where those three states plus Utah meet, is largely occupied by the Navajo reservation, and there was a horrifying Covid-19 outbreak there near the start of the pandemic. For quite a long time, the two New Mexico counties where most of the reservation is located had more cases than the rest of the state put together, despite having only about 7 or 8 per cent of the population. The Arizona part also had tremendous Covid problems. (The Navajo reservation does not extend into Colorado, and the adjacent Ute reservation seems not to have had much. Why? Good question.) Aggressive restrictions drove that down, and with the nation-wide resurgence in cases, which includes New Mexico, almost no new cases are being recorded in that area. The increase in NM is driven largely by college towns (Albuquerque, where UNM is, and Las Cruces, where NMSU is) and the "Little Texas" counties bordering north and west Texas. Why so few new ones in the previous hot spot? VERY interesting question.
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Re: Intuitions
Oh, I should clarify that the hot spots are not COVID hot spots, they are where I feel trouble coming from towards the end of October, if I try to get a sense of it. My sense is that whatever the actions-of-mankind event is, it will be in one or the other of those spots, but not actually both. It's more immediately contained than that.
Not that I'm necessarily RIGHT about any of it, just that's the feeling that I get. I also have a sense of a sullen yellow/purple bruise pulsing in the Michigan/Minnesota/Wisconsin/Illinois region, if you drew a circle that had a little bit of each of those in it, and a big tinnitis-ringing white blank over the northwest, starting from around the middle of Wyoming. But those aren't the thing for the end of October, either, those are just... things I sense on the map in my head?
Not that I'm necessarily RIGHT about any of it, just that's the feeling that I get. I also have a sense of a sullen yellow/purple bruise pulsing in the Michigan/Minnesota/Wisconsin/Illinois region, if you drew a circle that had a little bit of each of those in it, and a big tinnitis-ringing white blank over the northwest, starting from around the middle of Wyoming. But those aren't the thing for the end of October, either, those are just... things I sense on the map in my head?
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- Graybeard
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Re: Intuitions
Well, all calm in Four Corners at the moment, except for a real honker of a drought.
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Re: Intuitions
I will feel both silly and relieved if nothing happens.
The feeling does seem to have gone away, but it might have been drowned out by my own stress, which has been mounting due to midterms, or it might reflect a shift in the probabilities that says my suspicions no longer fit the pattern. That's the problem with trying to take these things seriously... They're experiential, just feelings, and so there's a world of variables and it's all unhelpfully vague.
The feeling does seem to have gone away, but it might have been drowned out by my own stress, which has been mounting due to midterms, or it might reflect a shift in the probabilities that says my suspicions no longer fit the pattern. That's the problem with trying to take these things seriously... They're experiential, just feelings, and so there's a world of variables and it's all unhelpfully vague.
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- Imp-Chan
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Re: Intuitions
So nothing happened on the 29th, which is the day a friend of mine was specifically worried about. I would like to relax and exclaim about how relieved I am and how silly I feel, but the Bad Feeling I had, that had actually eased the last few weeks, seems to be back? But much less specifically so, or at any rate, I seem to be still feeling anxiety... but perhaps it's just election anxiety. Which is an entirely reasonable thing for ANYONE to feel at this point.
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- Graybeard
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Re: Intuitions
Well, does the news of the day make you feel any better?
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Re: Intuitions
I am not experiencing a sense of relief, no.
But I am less... acutely anxious? Now it's a broader feeling.
I did accidentally nail the hot spots for the entire week of the election, though. Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico were in the one big circle, Pennsylvania was in the other, and there was indeed a sullen bruise over Minnesota and Michigan. I missed Georgia, but also Georgia isn't done yet. However, that is I am sure accidental, since it did not coordinate with what I was actually sensing.
But I am less... acutely anxious? Now it's a broader feeling.
I did accidentally nail the hot spots for the entire week of the election, though. Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico were in the one big circle, Pennsylvania was in the other, and there was indeed a sullen bruise over Minnesota and Michigan. I missed Georgia, but also Georgia isn't done yet. However, that is I am sure accidental, since it did not coordinate with what I was actually sensing.
Because scary little devil girls have to stick together.
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