2012-366 Day 185 – Memory

Having just pushed our way past the halfway point, I’m starting to become more and more concerned with accidentally repeating myself in one of these blog posts. Now it’s one thing to repeat a theme, that’s fine, especially in a project with so many entries. My real worry is in wholesale repeating a blog post or idea (although, who knows, maybe the second go-round would be superior?), as I have a hard enough time keeping track of the previous week and things coming up, let alone 180+ previous blog posts.

In general, I feel that I have an interesting memory structure that probably mirrors a lot of people out there (I’ve only recently recognized that last part). My brain doesn’t like to keep much extraneous information on hand, so if I don’t repeat it or have an anchor for it, it gets flushed pretty quick. Provide it some context, however, and information comes rolling back. That’s why I’ve always been such a good test taker, the test questions themselves usually provide enough context that I can retrieve the information so long as I have read or heard it at some point in the recent past. It seems to apply mostly to written communication and recall, however, as reminding me of a conversation generally does not have the same results.

As for events-based memory, I generally have to rely on pictures for those kinds of memories. If I have a picture of something, I can generally remember it fairly well even without having seen that picture for a while. Actually, even repeated discussion can help with my recall of a situation (although those are generally the more memorable events, considering that we are discussing them again), although new elements sometimes creep in on the retelling. Having read several memory studies in the past few years (okay, articles about the memory studies) have really driven home the fact that my memory is not as unusual as I might have once believed. Our memories are not these inviolate bastions of permanency that we might think, but instead electrical impulses that can be bent and shaped more by the current context than by what actually happened.

It used to bother me quite a bit that I could not remember large swaths of growing up, the tired minutiae of the day to day. I envied those who had detailed memory of everything (or so it seemed), and I have only recently realized that my brain is actually being efficient. The major events are still there (although perhaps a bit cloudy in detail, and I never have been any good at remembering specific conversations), and any events that I focus on and repeat I can move to a deeper level of memory with some more detail, but the minor events and conversations all have been cleared to keep plenty of room available for what happens next.

I guess the moral of the story is: if you want to have a better chance of me remembering something, you should give it to me in writing.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 189.6 miles
Volleyball Match Record: 3-0 (7-2 Game Record, +17 Point Differential)
Fitocracy Level: 22 ID: disciplev1