My daily reviews of a portion of the tags on my mental calendar now stretches back two years, prior to the time I began this process of remembering every day that passes on 17 December 2011.
I recall two days per week by reviewing the images I have pinned to those days. If they exist. Which is rare until I hit the magic date. From then on, I have images for every day.
While I have come up with images for some key dates in the mainly blank months - such as weddings, travel, birthdays - generally I have to make do with registering the date for the days of the week I am reviewing and recalling something significant for the month as a whole to at least have some idea of where I was and what was going on in my life.
I am finding some value in doing this, but it markedly different from the richness when my calendar is fully populated.
But there seems little point in trying to fill in all of the blanks.
Here's why.
Today is 31 May and a year ago I know I visited a shopping mall to meet up with a friend. I have an memory tag for the day. An image may be quite inconsequential - sitting with my friend at the mall - but it contains a great deal of information, fixing the day in time and place.
The year before, 31 May 2011, was a Tuesday. I know I was in my wife's country and we were probably staying in our flat at the time, though I cannot be certain.
Perhaps if I trawled through credit card records I could work out we had visited a particular café, which I might remember and might be able to turn that into a memory tag.
It may be defeatist, but I feel it is not worth that effort. It's not the tags that are important, but how they orientate me.
I recall two days per week by reviewing the images I have pinned to those days. If they exist. Which is rare until I hit the magic date. From then on, I have images for every day.
While I have come up with images for some key dates in the mainly blank months - such as weddings, travel, birthdays - generally I have to make do with registering the date for the days of the week I am reviewing and recalling something significant for the month as a whole to at least have some idea of where I was and what was going on in my life.
I am finding some value in doing this, but it markedly different from the richness when my calendar is fully populated.
But there seems little point in trying to fill in all of the blanks.
Here's why.
Today is 31 May and a year ago I know I visited a shopping mall to meet up with a friend. I have an memory tag for the day. An image may be quite inconsequential - sitting with my friend at the mall - but it contains a great deal of information, fixing the day in time and place.
The year before, 31 May 2011, was a Tuesday. I know I was in my wife's country and we were probably staying in our flat at the time, though I cannot be certain.
Perhaps if I trawled through credit card records I could work out we had visited a particular café, which I might remember and might be able to turn that into a memory tag.
It may be defeatist, but I feel it is not worth that effort. It's not the tags that are important, but how they orientate me.
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