Forgetful Johnny Mneonic

"Getting old is hard. Having lost half of your memory is even harder"

It sounds like the log line to a Phillip K. Dick story, but for me, it's a reality.  Ever since Forgetful Jones was a character on Sesame Street, I have' long been associated with that character.  The reason why is simple.

I have a poor memory.  It's always been that way.  It's not even a matter of convenience.  I forget birthday.  I forget telephone numbers.  I forget my own ideas almost as soon as they are born.  It's become a habit to write things down to the point that I keep pens and writing tools on my at all times.

Memory; something we desperately want to hold on to, because it is there that we store that which is more precious than any extrinsic treasure.  Memory is data and data is the the binary form of that which I pull from the ether and craft into an idea.

There have been times when I've lost memory cards or hard drives failed and with them; precious ideas, concepts born out of those Mad Moments as I heavily identify as being a Spark.  That's a whole nother post.

It's been so bad at times that I will write something as a reminder of an idea, set up tags and all sorts of things, forget to check it and lose track of it for years; then rediscover it and forget that I wrote it in the first place.  It's that bad.  Have you ever doubted that you own work was yours, because it was so well written?

How it would make you feel?

That's what I deal with.  Most of the time I just accept it with a smile, like Forgetful Jones always did, but it's soul crushing at other times.  I've shed many a tear over the things I've forgotten.

For a slacker who for the most of his life has believed in his own greatness, it wouldn't surprise me if I forgot most of it.

The only saving grace for a poor memory is a tendency to write things down, to a point that it can border on insanity.  I keep track of all my writings, works, ideas, art, musings, learnings, grocery list.  It contains works from before I was a father and charts a list of ways that I've come to think over the years.  It's a sort of combination of my Id and Ego.  My thoughts as they exist in the medium that I think i know the best; writing.  Pages upon pages, because I can't be counted on to remember my best written ideas.  I sure as hell can write them down.

I may not have a plug in my brain, but i think I'm interested in seeing if that's an option before the brain drain begins to set in.  I have many names for the failure for neurons to fire when trying to recall what you were telling someone ten minutes prior.  It ruins any sense of association, but then when you hear a song from the 90's that you can recite with 88.8% accuracy, well then it gets frustrating.  That happened btw.  You  learn ways to cope with it, but my hopes are that technology comes along or medicine or something that helps people like me, retrieve those long lost memories.

Athazagoraphobia

If I were dying, I'd want my loved ones to lock me in a death loop of memories, surrounded by my friends and family.  My memories would still be one of the most important parts of that.  Forgetting is my greatest fear.  Even the though of people forgetting I existed or not having any memorable contributions to humanity is a legitimate fear.

"On the plus side, I did REMEMBER to update that my oldest daughter and lead artist of my clan recently did an awesome picture and I didn't want to forget to post it.  You can find that link here."

Until some kind of solutions are created, I will alway struggle to remember things, events, people, names (ugh names are the worst.) but I'm fortunate for one reason; unless my will has been broken, I will be knocked down, but I won't stop fighting the good fight.  If I treat it like a handicap then I can find ways to overcompensate, and with modern tech developing at a pace faster than Moore's Law predicted, I think we can expect to see improvements in both long and short term memory retention.

In the future; if this blog is still around, I'll revise it if I remember to do so.  Say in about thirty years.  Let's make it a date

Assuming we aren't all Fallout Ghouls, let's meet back in 2050.

Until then, peace, stay Awesome!