That was the year that was

On the last day of 2012 newspapers, television and we ourselves look back over the past 12 months.

Thanks to following this process, I can remember every day of the year - at least the things I have chosen to remember as memory tags pinned to my mental calendar and the associated memories they enable me to access.

There are moments of change. The diagnosis that my too young niece has cancer. The results of an application. The slower transition of an overnight flight from one country to another. The milestone of moving into a new flat - and then moving out again.

But much of the time the change is as gradual as the seasons that provide the scenery through which I move. On many days my work routine is broken only by the ebb and flow of my relationship with my wife and my gradually improving running times and decreasing weight. Inexorably my hair grows - I have made a point of remembering my haircuts and have thereby cured myself of waiting two weeks too long between them.

For the year I have 366 images pinned to my mental calendar, which I can run through in my mind's eye in say an hour. If I remembered every second, it would take me a year, of course. These are my chosen selection of events and my view of these days is biased - and enriched - in ways I have been exploring on this blog.

If I had begun this process at the age of four, like the Brad Williams with hyperthymesia whose experience started me on this pathway, then I would have 43 sets of images to take me back to my childhood, past all the different people I have been as I have grown older and more experienced, and perhaps a little wiser. Waking each morning a little bit different, with new things to face as my world and the world around me changed.

In the retrospectives we will remember the people who are no longer with us. In some cases it will be a surprise that it was so long ago they passed away - I recall watching Whitney Houston's funeral service on the internet on 18 February 2012, it is my memory tag for that day.

Acknowledging every day that passes as I am doing makes me appreciate my days are numbered. As Thomas Hardy observed in one of his novels, which I devoured when at college, unbeknown to us every year we pass a date whose significance we do not know, the pre-anniversary of our coming death.

Holding the whole year of 2012 in my mind brings home how few days make up a life - and I have already lived longer than the life expectation of the not-so-distant past.

What I had for Christmas

Happy Christmas! I hope you received the presents you wanted - and some that you didn't, which are often more special.

I remember last Christmas well, but I did not make a point of remembering what I received from whom, or what I gave. This year I have decided to use the presents as a way of remembering the detail of the day.

This is an extension of a technique I have been developing. It involves remembering more than just an image to capture a day, extending into remembering key facts.

So when I attended the 20th reunion of a group I worked with in Africa, on 15 September 2012, I decided to remember everybody who made it to the event. When that date comes up in my reviews, I run through the 15 names.

I am using a freer version of this for my niece's wedding on 1 November 2012. Whenever I review the date, I try to think of a different aspect of the wedding, and if I have time, to relive several special moments.

Similarly for the work trip I made recently to India. I have a key image for each of the days spent there, but try to recall something extra each time, such as someone I met or something we discussed or did.

This year our Christmas gathering was on 24 December, eating late and staying up to open presents, as is the tradition in my wife's family.

I will try to remember a specific exchange of presents in each review. In this way I will carry the special moment of closeness with each relative who was there and retain a little of the spirit of Christmas for as long as I can remember.

Overlap

Now I am into the second year of remembering every day that passes.

I am not consciously changing the techniques I have developed to retain the memories, but something has changed organically.

I start my reviews from when I began this process on 17 December 2011, or the closest date after it, two days before the current day of the week. Today is Wednesday, so I run through the images pinned to my internal calendar for Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Automatically the layout of the calendar in my mind has changed. Until this week, those first dates lay at the start of the sequence of weeks. Now thinking back, December 2011 is separated as it would be in a real calendar. The January dates are at the start of the sequence, December requires a turn of the page.

In this way my mind is adjusting to the overlap of dates.

It seems it is the days of the week that align. 

Today, Wednesday 19 December 2012, lies over Wednesday 21 December 2011 - the day we arrived at my parents' house and went for lunch in town.

Of course, I know where I was on this date a year ago - and that because of the leap year it is two days earlier, not one.

The clarity remembering gives me makes the effort, such as it is, worthwhile.

Visiting my parents this year, they asked whether we had been together last year and when other members of the family had arrived. I know the answers. Though for the years before, it is a struggle for me to remember too.

One year on

And so a year ago today I began this process of remembering every day that passes.

I have images pinned to 366 days of my mental calendar, enabling me to recall key events as triggers for calling up each day.

From now on, I will know where I was and what I was doing a year ago.

There will be new challenges to retain and review this information, to avoid confusion between one year and another.

There will be new insights into how this perspective affects my life.

One thing: as Christmas approaches once more, I do not feel it has rushed around again.

So much has happened in the continuous sequence of days.

Do I really want to remember this?

Refreshing my memory tag for 21 March 2012 this morning, I found myself thinking, "Do I really want to remember this?"

The image pinned to my mental calendar is sitting in a café waiting for the exhaust to be adjusted on our car - it had been replaced a couple of weeks before and was knocking. I had just had a hair cut while I waited, haircuts being one of the things that I choose to remember, which has cured me of my habit of leaving it two weeks too long before thinking it is time for another.

But really. For the rest of my life do I really need to remember that I had a haircut on 21 March 2012?

Then I thought, why not? These are the things that make up life. The big things are easy to remember, but we spend most of our hours on the small things. Are those days when nothing more significant that a haircut occurred to pass into oblivion?

I am staying at a hotel at the moment. In India. A significant memory, perhaps. But thinking idly of the snack on room service last night, my thoughts strayed to staying in another hotel in my wife's country and all the receipts I had signed waiting for me when I checked out. I remember the moment and the hotel, but I'm not really sure of the occasion - was it a wedding anniversary? - the date, or even the year.

So yes, I do want to remember.

Cholesterol changes

I thought I'd have a blood test to see if there had been any change to my cholesterol levels since I began following the intermitant fasting regime on 30 August 2012.

This involves having two days per week with intake of below 600 calories. It hasn't been much of a problem sticking to this.

I have always exercised well and eaten pretty healthily and my cholesterol levels were just about within range when I last had them checked in 2008.

The key figures are overall cholesterol and HDL cholesterol. The latter is not a different type of cholesterol but a measurement of the cholesterol surrounded by High Density Lipoproteins. This is known as 'good' cholesterol because it causes less damage and even repairs artery walls, unlike the globules of cholesterol surrounded by Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL).

Both HDL and LDL cholesterol is needed. It is the way cholesterol is transported to the cells where it is deposited to make the cells waterproof. As cholesterol is a fat it is not water soluble. And that is why it needs to be surrounded by lipoproteins to be transported through the blood instead of clumping together.

So here are my figures:

Total cholesterol 154 mg/dl (2008: 152 mg/dl - Ideal <200 mg/dl)

HDL cholesterol 46 mg/dl (2008: 40 mg/dl - Ideal >40 mg/dl Protective >60 mg/dl)

LDL cholesterol 96 mg/dl (2008: 98 mg/dl - Ideal <100 mg/dl)

So not a great deal of change over the course of 3 months, comparing these two data points from different laboratories.

If I am aiming to increase HDL cholesterol then I'm heading in the right direction. Over 60 mg/dl is meant to correlate to reduced risk of heart disease.

However, I'm not getting too excited as it naturally occurred to me that these differences may well be within experimental error.

Indeed, I turned up this research paper which suggests readings are subject to error of ± 20%, so the same person can vary in consecutive measurements between at risk and low risk groups, even when following the guidance of 12 hours fasting before the measurements. See:
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=652985

Which means it is impossible to really conclude anything from these tests, though I probably have no reason to worry about my cholesterol lessons and may or may not be moving them in a healthier direction.

Power of five

This is obvious, but it only came to me this week.

My review process is to recall a three-day window finishing on the current day of the week for each week from when I began this process.

So today being Sunday, I've whizzed through the memory tags pinned to my mental calendar for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. I say the date to myself as I do so to associate this with the image.

I've just realised the obvious: adding five to the date of Sunday, gives me the date of the following Friday (except when it comes to the next month, of course).

I've been doing things much more cumbersomely since I began this method.