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Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

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Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

#81

Post by em-bee »

nequo wrote: post #67
em-bee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when i got my first portable laptop (a sony picturebook) i started a travel diary in a similar manner. initially only when i was away from home, but when i moved countries being away from home became a permanent state, so i kept writing almost every day. until it became a habit. i don't review past entries, but like you i sometimes use the diary to research certain facts. interestingly, when i write i always have som…

Other than it helping you as a source when you need to recall facts, have you noticed this habit changing you or how you experience going through your day?

that is a very good question, my initial response was going to be no, but while trying to explain that answer i realized it's not quite true.

it does not directly change my habits, but it does give me a better understanding of myself. for example one thing i learned is that it bothers me if i didn't accomplish at least something each day, to the point that i can't go to sleep. the reflection helps me notice smaller accomplishments, so i can sleep easier.

part of the benefit is a form of general reflection on the day, even on things that i don't write down. it does help me with is noticing when i get stuck in a rut, where one day after another is the same. like if for the fifth day in a row i wrote: get kids ready for school. work. make dinner. watch tv. it helps me notice these kind of pattern, and also, see how long this was going on. then i can refocus and look what else interesting is happening that i may not have noticed before. so either it changes how i feel about each day or it helps me add activities that break the routine.

it also helps me track things that i do want to change. say i set a goal of going for a walk for one hour each day, then this detail, which i ignore most of the time, now gets added to the diary. the diary doesn't so much cause me to change my habits, but rather is available as a tool that i can use to support an intended change of habits. but i don't do this systematically. it's more like an afterthought when other ways to reach the goal fail and i am bothered enough to do something about it.

it also helps me realize when i get behind on work. when you are at home busy with kids, sometimes a week can pass by without me realizing it. the daily reflection can act as an intervention. and the diary helps me understand that i didn't waste the week doing nothing.

Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

#82

Post by svat »

noduerme wrote: post #71

This strikes me as possibly the most profound form of navel-gazing ever developed, wherein the navel becomes a black hole. If you spend each day remembering all previous days, eventually you'll just be remembering days you spent remembering other days. (Which is what the author is doing: Remembering remembering). Seems rather maddening. Why not learn a language or something?

Reminds me of a Borges story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funes_the_Memorious, https://vigeland.caltech.edu/ist4/lectures/funes%20borges.pd...) and the article also led me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia — “Price has stated that she, like Funes, views her memory as a curse”.

Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

#83

Post by gravity2060 »

mbustamanter wrote: post #25

The moments captured in my images are fresh, but my perspective on them changes. I am doing an experiment in memory and trying to memorize the name of every U.S. county, with the aid of a map. Several months in I can say that the brain inexorably will tie names together (wether by geographical proximity or etymology, e.g. Imperial-Riverside-San Diego or Redwood-Greenwood), and the addition of new names affects the pe…

This is fascinating. I’m working on a memory project and would really like to get in touch and hear your insights on limits and especially counters to interference with memorization. I’ll put my email in my profile; pure gratitude if you can spare some time to share your wisdom with me.

Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

#84

Post by em-bee »

paganel wrote: post #70
em-bee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i note them with a simple entry. or i describe the details of the wedding or funeral, and other relevant facts, but i don't write about my feelings. for one, i consider the diary as something others may read some day, i don't necessarily want share my feelings. but also, at least from my experience so far, reading about the facts of a traumatic experience helps me remember the feelings i had at the time. so rereading…

Honest props to you for managing to do that, you're a much stronger person than I am.

thanks. but i am not sure if it counts, as i rarely go back to actually reread stuff. i am just writing what i have to deal with anyways, as it happens. i mean to say that if i do have the strength to deal with such events, being able to write about it in my diary is not necessarily an indication of that.

it rather manifests in other ways.

if i may say so, i sense a certain "i wish i had the strength to do that" in your comment. i am afraid that what comes across as strength is rather a weakness, a sort of inability to be affected by these events. it took me decades to understand where that comes from, and still has me wonder, why.

Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

#85

Post by BeetleB »

tetris11 wrote: post #2

Alzheimer's has to be one of the worst. I do find euthanasia to be a slippery slope[0], but I'll make an exception for Alzheimer's. 0: picture an understaffed and underfunded hospital, with a single nurse walking around calmingly asking anyone if they want it to end

Actually a real case in a US state that has death with dignity laws. One requirement of the law is that you can make the decision only when in a very bad state (high pain, etc as certified by a doctor). And only the person can make the decision. Not a loved one.

A woman diagnosed with Alzheimer's couldn't make use of this because it'll only get bad when she loses much of her mental faculty. But by that point she is not mentally fit to make that decision.

She filed a lawsuit and eventually moved to Europe to get her death with dignity there.

Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

#86

Post by em-bee »

Thiez wrote: post #51
falcor84 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that to be rational - if you believe in eternal damnation, you would want the bad people to get there fast, but keep the good people out. And if you feel this is really in *your* hands, you would push very vocally for it.

When the destination is eternal, there is no rational reason to hurry there. What is a human lifetime compared to eternity? Even a trillion years is inconceivably short compared to eternity. If an afterlife exists the time where the inhabitants can still remember their life before death must be insignificant.

that depends on the dimension of time in the afterlife. some believe that there is no time at all in the afterlife, such that all souls in the afterlife appear to have been there since the beginning, yet also seem to all just have entered just now.

also, in as much as life on earth is a preparation for the afterlife, you will always be reminded of what you failed to do in your human life, just like you may get a frequent reminder of how not graduating from university, or worse being born into a certain demographic has limited your job/life options.

Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

#87

Post by throwaway122263 »

Years ago I had a really bad breakup. We lived together for about 6 months and she slowly got more and more hostile towards me. She moved out and severed all contact with me. She forgot a couple of her daily journals in a drawer. Well, I had to look because I was so confused as to what happened.

Reading through it, I was blown away at how skewed her perception of reality was. The way she recalled events were absolute fantasy. She took all these mundane interactions (a lot of which were genuinely positive) between us and twisted them into somehow being wronged by me.

I had always thought of writing in a journal but after reading that decided I never would. It has the potential to crystalize misremembered, or misinterpreted things into reality. She had created a self propelling feedback loop of negativity.

Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

#88

Post by ac2u »

noduerme wrote: post #71

This strikes me as possibly the most profound form of navel-gazing ever developed, wherein the navel becomes a black hole. If you spend each day remembering all previous days, eventually you'll just be remembering days you spent remembering other days. (Which is what the author is doing: Remembering remembering). Seems rather maddening. Why not learn a language or something?

Perhaps given the author's familial experiences with the tragedy of Alzheimers, it's a sort of therapy.

I'm not saying it's effective, but perhaps doing such an exercise and having it lead to the circular "remembering nothing but remembering", it might help folks empathise with the fallibility of the mind when others suffer a disease like Alzheimers.

Or maybe the author is just a curious sort. Either way, not my place to judge.

Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

#89

Post by techno_tsar »

throwaway122263 wrote: post #87

Years ago I had a really bad breakup. We lived together for about 6 months and she slowly got more and more hostile towards me. She moved out and severed all contact with me. She forgot a couple of her daily journals in a drawer. Well, I had to look because I was so confused as to what happened. Reading through it, I was blown away at how skewed her perception of reality was. The way she recalled events were absolute…

Her actions have more to do with her psychology and less to do with her keeping a journal. A lot of people keep journals and it probably has the opposite effect. She sounds emotionally immature.

Re: Ten years of remembering every day that passes (2022)

#90

Post by l33tman »

The Narrative Clip was created partially for this (giving people a photographic memory of sorts), and it was used by a lot of people with alzheimers as it turned out you can remember stuff better if you review every day's memories in the evening, or something like that.
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