Adding information

The images pinned to my mental calendar as memory tags are providing a way to capture not only what I was doing on that day, but other key information I would like to remember.

This includes the names of friends' children, types of trees and jokes (see past posts).

Sometimes, however, I have to add the information after the event.

I was reminded of this yesterday, Wednesday 26 February 2014, as I went through the memory tags for each Tuesday and Wednesday of the past 6 months in my morning review.

On Wednesday 16 October 2013, my wife and I met my mother at a garden centre for lunch and shopping. They did not have what she wanted so we went on to another one I had not visited before. I included this in my memory tag that night, but could not remember the name of the second garden centre.

Passing by a couple of weeks later, I constructed a mnemonic to remember the name and added that to the memory tag retrospectively.

Now whenever I think of that day, I remember the name of the garden centre.

This is powerful, but it troubles me as it is, in a sense, a false memory. I did not record the name when I visited. Now I can think of my mother suggesting we go on to this second garden centre and hear her saying the name. But until I saw the name again, I couldn't retrieve this information by thinking back to that same scene.

It is something police forces and juries have to be aware of when assessing the reliability of witnesses: are they remembering something from the time it allegedly happened or have they, even unwittingly, added the information to their memory after the event?

That year

I have found an easier way to refresh the memory tags on my mental calendar for years past.

Now 2014 has well and truly begun, I have three full years to get through in the one-day-per-month part of my refresh routine.

This is something I do during free mental time during the day. But it was starting to feel a bit daunting.

So now I split the review into yearly blocks.

At some point during the day, I call up 2011 and remember images pinned to each day for the same day of the month: it being 17 February today, I remember the 17th of each month.

It doesn't take long, particularly as 2011 is mainly blank as I only began this processing of remembering on 17 December 2011.

At another time, I'll run through the 12 days due for a refresh in 2012 and later those in 2013, tagging the image for the day in January 2014 on at the end, at least for now. As 2014 progresses, it will merit its own separate slot.

I do wonder what will happen when there are too many years for even this more relaxed approach to cope. I have a vague hope that the point will come when I can remember the memory tags without having to refresh them, just think of the date and it appears.

But, for now, I still find pleasure in the reviews.

It is very rare now that I struggle to remember an image. Frequently they are like old friends I want to greet and renew acquaintances, even though it will be no more than 31 days since I last thought of them.

It was like that today, thinking of 17 July 2013. It was the day I gave my mother a book of photos I had laid out with captions and had printed, a delayed birthday present. She was overjoyed with it and for months afterwards would take it out most days to look through.

That's a nice memory to come around every month, whether I dwell on it or not.

Precious memories

February 2014 and I begin in the not-so-new year now when I review the memory tags for the past month.

My two-day-per-week review of memory tags for the past 6 months still begins in 2013, but inexorably the months drop out of it. When they do I make a point of running through every day of the month before letting it slide into the day-per-month review that refreshes the images in the more distance past.

Coming across the images capturing the key events and feelings of the early days of this process of remembering every day that passes, at the end of 2011 and into 2012, it struck me how precious they are, how glad I am to have them.

It would have been enriching to have begun this process long ago.

As more time passes, the memory tags I do have become more precious.