So, there was this shadow. Right there, in the window. Every now and then, I’d catch it out of the corner of my eye. Drove me nuts, mostly because I could never quite figure out when it would show up or what exactly it was. Just a flicker, a dark shape, and then gone.
At first, I just tried to be more aware. You know, glancing over at the window more often. Tried to match it with the clock on the wall. But that was useless. I’d either be busy, or I’d look too late, or too early. It was like it knew I was watching.
My Brilliant Plan (Not Really)
So, I decided to get a bit more, let’s say, “scientific” about it. Ridiculous, I know, for a stupid shadow. I grabbed an old notebook and a pen. Yeah, real high-tech. I started trying to jot down times whenever I thought I saw it, or when I expected to see it. My notes looked like a mess. Just random times, question marks, stuff like “around 3 PM? Maybe?”
That wasn’t cutting it. Still too much guesswork. I needed proof. I needed to dateline this thing properly.
Then I had a “brilliant” idea. My old smartphone! It was just sitting in a drawer, gathering dust. I fished it out, charged it up, and propped it up on the windowsill, pointing it outside. Hit record on the video camera. Figured I’d just let it run for a whole day, then go through the footage. Easy, right?
Wrong. First, the battery died faster than I remembered. Then, the storage filled up. I had to tweak the settings, record in lower quality, set it to record only during daylight hours. It took a couple of tries to get it right. I ended up with hours of footage of… well, mostly nothing. Just the boring street outside my window.
Then came the fun part: watching all that footage. My god, it was dull. I spent what felt like an eternity fast-forwarding, slowing down, rewinding. My eyes started to hurt. I made a new set of notes, this time with actual timestamps from the video. Slowly, a pattern started to emerge. Or so I hoped.
And what was this super mysterious shadow that I’d dedicated so much “effort” to datelining? It turned out to be the neighbor’s fat cat, Gary. He liked to hop onto the fence for about five minutes every afternoon, usually between 2:47 PM and 2:52 PM, casting this weird, elongated shadow through my window when the sun was at a certain angle. All that work, for a cat.
- Observation phase: Noticing the blasted shadow.
- Manual logging: Scribbling down useless times.
- Tech deployment: Old phone to the rescue (sort of).
- Data analysis: Losing my mind watching boring videos.
- The grand reveal: Gary the cat.
Why All The Fuss About A Shadow?
You’re probably wondering why on earth I’d spend my time doing something so pointless. Well, truth is, I had a lot of time on my hands back then. I’d just been let go from my job. Yeah, one of those “we’re restructuring” deals, which basically means you’re out. No warning, just a box for my stuff. It was a bit of a shock, left me feeling pretty useless, to be honest.
So, I was at home, moping around, sending out resumes that felt like they were going into a black hole. The silence in the house was deafening. And that’s when I started noticing little things. Like that damn shadow. It became a stupid little project, something to focus on other than the fact that my career had just hit a brick wall. Gave my brain something to do, I guess, even if it was just tracking a cat.
It’s funny, the things you fixate on when you’re stressed or bored. Before that whole job mess, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the shadow, let alone try to “dateline” it. I’d have been too busy with actual work. Now, I sometimes see Gary on the fence and just laugh. Still a fat cat, still casting a shadow. Life goes on, eh?
Anyway, that’s my story of datelining the shadow in the window. Not exactly groundbreaking science, but it was a thing I did. And now you know. Maybe you’ve got your own “shadow” you’ve been obsessing over. We all do, sometimes.
