I do not remember my life and it's fine

I often can’t remember what I did the previous week / weekend before that. I’m 36, and this is how I’ve been for as long as I can remember (our high school had alternating daily class schedules, and I very often forgot if the day before was an A schedule or B schedule, as I could recall some random moments in class from the past handful of days but I couldn’t tell if one recollection was of yesterday or the day before, or the day before that — it’s all a jumble).

To expand on that: questions about travel are my Achilles heel when it comes to dating. “So, where have you been, and what did you do while there?” Well, I took a trip to Iceland with my ex-girlfriend, and I’ve been all over the place with my family, but… I don’t remember the names of the places, and I don’t remember all that much of historical sites and such. Probably doesn’t help that I’m not all that engaged with the names of places / things to start with (vs simply experiencing the thing itself), so that’s in one ear and out the other. What I do recall is conversation and feelings of connectedness, and a couple snapshots of particularly picturesque scenery. But which cities? Which museums/sites/regions? What did I do while there? No idea. I actually rehearse such scenarios before dates to avoid an awkward first impression.

I’m great at remembering how things are connected, why something is the way it is, and how things work. But I couldn’t remember individual facts (names, numbers, the chronological order of independent experiences, etc) to save my life. But most of life is made up of individual, isolated details — which then means that most of life isn’t very memorable for me.

This is a fairly normal aspect of recall where our minds need some help to recall further memories.

It's why if you forget something you were thinking or going to do, go back to where you were and do the thing that lead to that thought and often it will come back to you.

Aphantasia I think is different, because this type of thing you describe happens for all types of recall not just visual imagery.

I think it is about adopting the right framework. A mix of Clayton Christiansen and 5 whys works for me (similar issues).

I start by writing down the big things: In this year I worked at/for/with ....

WHY was I there: I think about the major projects I did.

WHY was I there: I think (and try to verify) the impact #s/%s those projects had.

WHY was I there: I think about the technical and soft skills needed to make that happen.

WHY do I care: I consider if there is any configuration of things that would make me consider doing the project again.

Having to track past performance as a business made this much clearer -- I adopted the above approach to expand out CV, then developed a similar approach for business development templates to explain recent past work.

I sometimes will drop these templates into an LLM and have it work with me to define or identify ways to better communicate.

I do not remember my life and I’m a bit sad about it. Aphantasia is completely fine - I feel like that makes me better at various things. SDAM just feels like mostly downside. It makes it hard to notice the passage of time, or plan for the future. It makes me sad whenever I look at pictures of my kids, but can’t remember them being young like that. It makes me sad that when I am old, I will not have the memories of my youth to look back on.

I met someone with SDAM who described it in a more striking way.

He said he doesn’t have any “first-person” memories. Most people, even if they forget most things they do day-to-day, and don’t have great “indices” of their memories, can think back on certain times where they remember being there, doing a thing, probably with some visuals associated with that, which can be played back. This person said that none of the things they remember that they did, they can remember personally doing, if that makes sense.

For me, I have scattered samples, like once in a while throughout my life, my brain sort of takes a snapshot and forms a memory. I can imagine myself back in each place I lived, for example, or each place I worked, or graduating from college, or walking on the beach.