Check it outtt! I put together a visualization depicting the people who have sat next to me on the metro to and from work over one year of commuting. All of this is based on remembered data. My commute doesn’t really vary unless I sleep in and catch a late train. So, here’s how it works.

The radiating lines represent each weekday of the year. The very top line is July 1st, 2010. It’s a Thursday. If you look closely between the lines, you can see the paler lines for Saturday and Sunday, which I faded out since I don’t take the metro to work on the weekend (faded lines also account for holidays and days I worked from home). The first day of July falls a line away from the weekend lines. The ring in the middle of the center with alternating light and dark strokes measures out the months in increments. Since July starts at the top, you can see the lighter line underneath marking out the duration of the month. July is the same color on the list of months at the bottom. So that’s how time is measured. The circle ends on June 30th, 2011. (My 23rd birthday. Cool.)

The concentric circles represent each stop on the Blue Line. I take the metro from Franconia-Springfield to Rosslyn every day. The first ring outside of the center is Franconia-Springfield, and the last ring before the edge is Rosslyn. They’re spaced out according to the distance between them, which is not accurate down to the mile or anything, but seems about right.

The dots are people. Filled-in dots are people who sit next to me on the way to work, and empty dots are people who I sit next to on the way back. Basically, most of the time someone sits next to me at Van Dorn or King Street. Sometimes a second person will sit next to me at the Pentagon. The train is always crowded on the way home, so I always sit next to someone as soon as I leave Rosslyn, if I get to sit down at all. And, yeah. That’s it. Minimally commemorating 600 or so people with whom I will probably never cross paths again.