Remembering the Olympics

The Rio 2016 Olympics finished on Sunday. There is a four-year wait until the next edition in Tokyo.

I know what four years is like now, taken one day at a time, as the images on my mental calendar cover every day back to the London 2012 Olympics - and beyond.

I don't remember everything about the 2012 Olympics, but several key events are recorded in the memory tags for days during that period.

The opening ceremony took place on 27 July 2012. We watched it at gathering in a church, after the "All the Bells" ringing across the UK that morning. Much of the ceremony is memorable enough not to be specifically coded in my memory tag. The Queen and James Bond. Mr Bean. The Olympic Flame. The Olympic Rings in flames above the stadium.

We were in the UK to see some of the events. On 29 July 2012, Brazil beat Belarus 3-1 in the men's football. The team included Neymar, a star already, but qualifying under the under-23 rule nonetheless. Neymar scored the winning penalty in the shootout in the final against Germany on 20 August 2016 (revenge for the 7-1 defeat to Germany in the World Cup in 2014, coded in my memory tag for Tuesday 8 July 2014).

We had a few days holiday in Scotland after Brazil's game in 2012 and my memory tags capture the people and places visited on that trip. The Olympics is background with no key events recorded on my mental calendar until 5 August 2012. We were driving to our next destination listening to commentary of Andy Murray in the tennis final at Wimbledon. We arrived in time to watch the end of the match, which he won, and then go on to play in the mixed doubles final, which he and his partner lost.

The men's single final this time around was also on Sunday - 14 August 2016. Murray won again. Memorably, the BBC interviewer congratulated him on being the first person to win a second gold medal in tennis and, to his credit and acclaim, he responded that Venus and Serena Williams had already won four gold medals each. His victory is included in the image on my mental calendar.

Back to 2012. We went to Hyde Park to watch the Olympics on big screens on 8 August and returned for the women's open-water swimming the following morning. In Rio, this took place off Copacabana on 15 August, memorable because the Brazilian swimmer, Poliana, dragged from the Serpentine with hypothermia in 2012, won Bronze after a French swimmer two places before her was disqualified for obstruction.

That day in 2012, we also went to watch volleyball at Earls Court and the women's football final at Wembley (USA v Japan, 2 - 1). The defeat of the Brazilian women's team on 16 August 2016 to Sweden is in my memory tag for that day.

Super Saturday in 2012, when three Golds were won by Team GB, took place on 4 August 2012, but I had to look that up, because it was not in my memory tag. We were actually travelling that day to Glasgow on our return south. The details of that journey and the hotel where we stayed are pinned to my calendar and have been refreshed in a fraction of a second when I have run through these date in periodic reviews. But in those reviews, I've never recalled it was Super Saturday as well. Stopping to think now, my memory of watching the wins of Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah, is distinctly vague.

But I remember the emotion and pride afterwards the British population had in the GB athletes - and in itself for celebrating their victory so enthusiastically. Even the right-wing, xenophobic tabloid The Sun was full of praise and repeated a joke doing the rounds on Twitter: "A Muslim, a mixed race lass & a ginger bloke walk into a bar. And everyone gets them a drink." Usually minorities would be the target of the punchline - now the punchline was they were accepted as heroes in modern Britain.

Of course, my calendar since then has the vote to leave the European Union on 23 June 2016, following xenophobic scaremongering and followed by a rise in hate crimes against minorities.

All the same, the three GB athletes deserved a drink once more with Super Saturday mark 2, on 13 August 2016, taking Bronze (Rutherford - long jump), Silver (Ennis-Hill - heptathlon) and Gold (Farah - 10,000 metres). I was there to see it in person this time, as we visited Rio to follow the Olympics. Elaine Thompson took Gold in the women's 100 m in the same session and Thiago Bras, who went on to win men's pole vault, qualified for the final. Most of our tickets were for cheaper qualifying rounds, but we gladly paid for the tickets to see history being made on this day.

Mo Farah also won the 5,000 metres in London 2012. I don't have it in a memory tag, but this time I do remember watching the race, particularly the commentator saying it was slow. I've checked and it was on 11 August 2012, so I've now added into my image for that day, which reminded me of a bike ride.

Is it cheating to modify an image so long after the event?

Seeing as I make the rules, no.

I avoid making false memories, creating an image for something that must have happened, but for which I have no memory. In this case, I remember the event, but didn't recall the date. Sticking a pin in it is allowed. I've decided.

It also provides a symmetry to remembering Rio 2016. My image for Saturday 20 August 2016 includes Mo Farah winning the 5,000 metres for the second time. In both cases, this was a week on from his 10,000 metres win. Patterns like this help me.

The remainder of the London Olympics pass in the background. My memory tags are about other trips and visits or work I was doing. That is, until 22 August 2012 and the closing ceremony. My tag is cycling to where we are staying, knowing it is on that evening. The ceremony itself is not in my image as my conventional memory serves up details of it.

I followed Rio 2016 more closely and spent more days attending events and this is reflected in the memory tags.

Now I have two Olympic Games in this period of remembering every day that passes. Four years to Tokyo. I will be filling the days until then.

Refresh technique for coping with over four years

I have been following this process of remembering every day that passes for four and a half years now, still without losing a day.

But every now and then I've had to change how I refresh the images pinned to my mental calendar as memory tags. A month ago I made a major change as I was becoming overwhelmed again. I had been recalling two days from every month for the years 2011 - 2013 on one day and then for the period 2014 - present on the next day. It was proving too difficult to complete, so I stopped.

The method I am using now is to recall images from one year only. But not just two days. Eight days.

At the moment, I've been running through the days 8 - 15 of each month. This is very relaxed because I have 5 years to cover and 8 days to do them in. I can have a day off, or take a couple of days to cover a year.

Once I've orientated myself on my mental calendar, it doesn't really take much longer to remember the 8-day window than the two-day window. 

I have chosen 8 days because it helps in navigating as I imagine I am walking over the calendar.

For example, the 8th January 2015 was a Thursday, I remember. Running through to the 15th takes me to Thursday again. Finishing on the same day means I automatically know the day for the start of the window.

I learnt the patterns long ago to find the same day in the next month. 

January has 31 days, so I move three days along and a month back to find 8 February is a Sunday. 15 February is also Sunday, of course. 

The 8th and 15th March are Sundays (2015 wasn't a leap year). 

March has 31 days, so I move three days on again to take me to Wednesday for 8 and 15 April. April has 30 days, so two days on to Friday for 8 and 15 May. And so on.

The 8-day windows are proving better for reinforcing the landscape of the completed years. And the time between recalling each image on my mental calendar remains the same with this technique. I will think of every day of this period once per month, even if only for a fraction of a second.

I still treat the past 6 months differently. Recalling two days per week, then every day of the last month. I generally do the former every other day.

So now my refresh process is simpler, more relaxed and may not need to change until I have completed 8 years of memories.

But if you want to try this process, see my post "starting out" under "about me".

When were we here?

I often surprise family and friends these days when we visit somewhere and someone says, "When were we last here?"

On a recent trip to a café, I was able to reply, "October 17, 2013. It was a Thursday and we stopped here on the way to visit that place in the countryside."

I even remembered what we had eaten and that in our subsequent visit we had spent some time identifying trees. The trees are included in my memory tag for the day as a way to store the features I need to identify them in future.

I was with my parents on both trips. My mother is suffering memory loss, which is becoming progressively worse. She asked repeatedly if we had been to the café before, even though it is one we have visited many times over the years, though most of those visits are lost in the mists before I began this process of remembering every day that passes.

Eventually my mother stopped asking if we had been to the café before, but then started to say she had been to the café just a few weeks ago. Somehow she had now connected with a past memory, but could not place it in time.

It is sad to see my Mother's memory failing her like this. I wonder if I am destined to suffer the same way in my old age and whether this process will have any impact on what happens.

Roaming free

As I wrote last time, this process of remembering every day that passes collapsed under the number of accumulated days at the end of April.

After a pause, I was ready to start again.

I began with a memory reboot. This is where I start on 17 December 2011 and recall the images pinned to my mental calendar as memory tags one day after the other. I aim to cover several months in a day, so after a couple of weeks have caught up.

This time things have been different.

I did the reboot through 2012 and 2013. Then stopped. I didn't feel like doing the same through 2014.

Instead, I continued with my short-term review only. To date, this has covered the past 6 months. I review two days per week. So as today is Thursday, I would review Wednesday and Thursday of each week.

But that felt like too much effort. I was still in need of a lighter regime. So instead of 6 months, I've kept the short-term review to the days of 2016 only.

It's been much more relaxed.

Then I became a little concerned that the images pinned to my mental calendar to remember the end of 2015 might fade as they had dropped out of regular reviews earlier than in my 6-month review approach. Rather than resuming the 6-month review, I've done a separate two-day window review of the whole of 2015.

But again, in a more relaxed way.

This is how it has gone for the past few days.

Monday: I reviewed Monday and Tuesday of every week from 4 January 2016 to a month ago, then every day of the past month.

Tuesday: I reviewed Tuesday and Wednesday of every week in 2015. Then every day of the last month.

Wednesday: I reviewed Wednesday and Thursday of every week from 6 January 2016 to a month ago, then every day of the past month.

Today (Thursday): I will review Thursday and Friday of every week in 2015. Then every day of the last month.

My idea is to follow this sequence until I have looped round to the Monday and Tuesday of every week in 2015. That will complete a memory reboot of 2015.

Then I think I'll do a reboot of 2014 in some way. Either sequentially or this two-day window technique.

My feeling and hope is that these completed years are now familiar landscapes. Perhaps I no longer need the discipline of a rigid method to ensure that I refresh the days within a certain time frame.

I can return to any of the full calendars of memory tags when I choose to roam over them.

Withdrawal and perspective

My refresh technique for reinforcing the images pinned to my mental calendar as memory tags was collapsing at the end of April.

So I thought it was time for a pause. I know that I can do a memory reboot, so do not fear stopping. A reboot is where over a period of a couple of weeks I run through the images on my mental calendar sequentially from 17 December 2011 when I began this process of remembering every day that passes. I cover several months a day in free mental time and can then return to whatever method I was using to refresh just a selection of images for each week or month.

I've been remembering every day that passes for over four and half years, so thought I would simply stop for a week or two.

What happened took me by surprise.

Normally - in what has become normal - I often use free mental time to revisit my mental calendar.

Without that distraction I found my mind to focus more on current events, particularly those causing me stress.

From the time before I began this process, I used various phrases to help me cope with stress. Such as "give me more strength". These are to supplant negative thoughts like, "I can't stand any more", or the taunting, self-critical thoughts that come unbidden to anyone sometimes when life is overwhelming.

I found over the several days without my refresh technique that both my coping phrases and taunting thoughts became much more prevalent. I was reminded how draining these can be.

In fact, so draining, that I returned to my mental calendars sooner than I had intended.

Here's why.

It is not for the distraction.

It is not to live in the past.

It is for perspective.

All things pass.

Alighting on the threads of the tapestry of the past few years reminded me of both good times and bad times. Reminded me of my strength. And brought home the passage of time.

Perspective.

That is the greatest gift this process gives me. It is beneficial to my stress levels and mental health.

The nature of my refresh techniques means that the images and events I recall are chosen simply due to their position on my mental calendar. Although the days selected are not random, the events and moods are. I do not tug at particular memories, but see the diversity of separate threads and so gain an overview of the rich tapestry of my life.

However, as I will explain in my next post, I have not returned to my past refresh technique. As often happens when a system collapses under the weight of the accumulated days, a new approach emerges.

Time for a break from reviewing

Over the past 4+ years since I began remembering every day that passes, I have repeatedly found the methods I have developed have collapsed as the number of days has grown. It seems essential to review the images pinned to my mental calendar as memory tags at intervals to stop them from fading. I've been doing each image at least once a month using various patterns for selecting the images.

The current method is falling apart. I have been failing to complete the more detailed review of the images pinned to my mental calendar for the most recent 6 months. My practice has been to review two days per week to entrench these images, before they move into less frequent review patters.

So today being Sunday, I would review the images for Saturday and Sunday of each week. Tomorrow I would review the images for Sunday and Monday. The overlap helps to reinforce the connection between consecutive days for long-term sustainability.

More recently, I have only done this every other day. So I might have a break on Monday and instead on Tuesday review Monday and Tuesday images. This covers all days of the week, but without the overlap. That didn't seem an issue as the two-day window shift by a day each week.

More recently still, I've missed doing the review twice and so been faced with using a three-day window to cover missed days. Sometimes I've not even managed that and so have simply run through the whole of the past month or so, just to make sure I don't loose those days.

It seems something has to give. Maybe it is time to give up on the more detailed 6-month review. Do I have the confidence to rely on the in-depth review of the past month only?

At the same time, I've hit a problem with my longer-term review. I had already made this more manageable by splitting it into two. One day, I would review two-days-per-month from the end of 2011 to end of 2013. The next day, I'd review the same two days for each month from the start of 2014 to date.

Today I was to review the 24th and 25th of the each month of the earlier years. But I hadn't completed yesterday's review of 22nd and 23rd of 2014 to date. I was trying to catch up, but it was proving too distracting. So I've stopped.

I'm going to have a day or two off reviewing all except the past month.

Then I'll try a memory reboot, taking a few months each day and reviewing consecutive images. It will take around 16 days to do this reboot, then I'll see what to do next.

The Apple MacBook Pro Easter bug

My memory tag for March 21, 2016, includes opening my MacBook Pro only to see the screen blank out immediately.

I had left it switched on, as is my habit, while travelling back from a weekend away. The battery was flat.

But it would not switch on when the charger was connected. This gave a feeble green glow, instead of the strong orange to show it was charging.

This had happened to me once before - and I suspected I had to wait several days for it to operate again. All the same, I searched the Apple and other discussion groups. It is a common problem, it seems. People suggest resetting the charge memory by holding down shift - alt - command keys (or shift - ctrl - command, I tried all variations), but this made no difference.

Leaving the charger connected overnight did not help.

The solution was to wait three days. The last time it happened the Apple store explained that residual charge would drop below a threshold and something would reset.

On the Thursday, the charger light shone bright when I connected it and it started as normal, even opening the windows for the programs I had last used. That too is in a memory tag.

My battery settings are set to go into power saving mode, but this does not seem to help. My solution is to always shut down, even when leaving the computer for a short time (I thought it had plenty of charge when this happened).

I can only see this as a bug. Why should a laptop be out of commission for three days before resetting? And surely it should be capable of operating on an external power supply.

On the discussion groups, people who have tried everything are finally advised to book an appointment at an Apple store.

But this three-day shut-down seems to be a known failing, even if it is not acknowledged. My MacBook Pro came back to life just before Easter, so it seems apt to call it the Easter bug.

If it happens to you - and your laptop starts working again after three days - post a comment.

Killing flies

Over the past few days I've been remembering days from my youth in great detail.
I have a feeling this is due to my change in approach to the completed years of my mental calendar. I have images pinned to every day of 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Each calendar is complete and unchanging - the past is set in stone, even if memories may be reinterpreted in light of later events. I'm treating these as a landscape I can walk over, finding it familiar and welcoming, rather than a challenging feat of memory to recall each separate image.

These years also have become more significant as, following the death of David Bowie, I am imagining how it would be if I had about 18 months to live. I picked a date in May 2017 - not with the intention of really dying, but imagining that is when my mental calendar ends. This has had quite a profound effect in bringing home that the years of my mental calendar are all I have - even if I don't know how many there are to come.

Trying to kill a mosquito this week, I suddenly remembered being a child on holiday with the family in a caravan and killing blue bottles that had invaded our caravan. My brother and I thought it was hilarious fun, until my mother pointed out we were killing living creatures. For many years, I would then chase flies out the window if I could, rather than swat them. Killing mosquitoes, however, is justifiable homicide (or mosquicide).

This memory is very clear, and probably comes from when I was 11, given the age of my brother in the memory and my recollection it was a particularly hot summer. I have probably not recalled this memory for many years, if at all. But it is as vivid as any of those I have consciously pinned to my mental calendar as memory tags to remember every day that passes.

This recollection triggered many other equally vivid memories of my family, some from even further back. Since then, other memories from the more distant past keep popping into my consciousness.

Of course, I would sometimes remember past memories before I began this process.

This week it seems they are coming to me without effort. This is a side effect I will continue to monitor.

Rebooting the year

When I began this process of remembering every day that passes I would periodically run sequentially through the images pinned to my mental calendar. Usually on a long drive.

As the days piled up, this became unfeasible. But I missed it. A sequential review brings the connection between days into clearer focus. It also provides me with a great deal of insight into what was happening then and how it impacts on now.

Then at around 1000 days, my refresh technique collapsed. The way to recover was to go back to sequential recall, even though it took several days, while I looked to modify my refresh technique to cope (my current refresh technique is under 'about me' - for the initial version see 'how it began').

The memory reboot post from that time explains more.

I did a few more memory reboots in the following year.

Now I'm over 1500 days, with four years of my mental calendar completed (2012 - 2015), a sequential review of a single year turns out to be useful.

It is easy to fit this around the refresh technique, particularly as I often drop the 6-month review now altogether, doing it on alternate days.

The past is set in stone, even if my understanding of it changes. Running through a complete year over the course of a few days maps out the landscape - a goal I wrote about recently.

Having gone through those four years sequently, my usual reviews are quicker. Not only are the images clearer, but the connections to surrounding days are strengthened. It is very rare now that I have to recover a lost image.

It feels this is leading somewhere. A refresh technique suited to many more years of memory. Or perhaps completed years will become so entrenched in my memory, I can rely on them being there without routine reviews.

Lost images - 3 and 4 December 2014

This is a nice straightforward example of how I retrieve lost images.

These came up in my recent run through of past months to refresh the images pinned to my mental calendar. I was reviewing the 2nd and 3rd of each month.

When I came to 2nd December, I had a blank. After a bit of thought, I remembered I had put the car in to the shop to be serviced.

But I couldn't come up with the image for 3rd December and looking to the 4th for a clue showed me I couldn't remember that day either, though I had the 5th down.

So I let it go and moved on.

In my review the next day I came across an image of having my haircut and immediately remembered that was in my image for 3rd December. The image was off a conversation with the various barbers that cut my hair where I go, about the forthcoming Christmas holiday.

That brought the image for 4th December back to me - bumping into someone at a café where I went to meet my wife for lunch.

There's always something that triggers recall.

Starting out

I've been asked via my Facebook page for more information about creating images to remember every day that passes. So here goes.

I'm going to go back to basics as my current process (see the links under 'about me') is handling over 1500 days.

But on 17 December 2011, I had just one image pinned to my mental calendar.

As I added images for subsequent days, I would first think of those I had already added to refresh them. Then for images older than a month, I dropped down to recalling the image for the same day of the week. By then they were entrenched in my memory and a weekly reminder proved enough to stop them fading. After 6 months, recalling the images once a month seems to be sufficient.

To show how it works, I'm going to go through the images from the past month, explaining how I chose the events to capture in the images and how the refresh process works for me.

I always say I don't know if my method will work for other people. It has changed as I've gone on and I think the process of discovering how to cope as the number of days piles up is probably an important part of the process.

But imagine you are starting out. After your first month, you might have something like my last month.

1 January 2016: New Years Day. I went with my wife to visit her sister, who had some more distant relatives staying with her. The image pinned to my calendar is arriving at my sister-in-law's apartment and saying to myself the name of two of her guests. This both reminds me of the day and their names. I have a second image that captures one moment of our evening out together, specifically looking at a Christmas tree. Thinking of these images now, opens up a lot more about the day.

The image is pinned to my mental calendar. I see the calendar as month-per-view pages, with January closest to a large 2016. I automatically know this image is on the front row, on the square for Friday.

As if I'm walking on the calendar I step to the right and I'm on...

2 January 2016: So I know it is Saturday. The image from Friday reminds me where I am. I also have two images for this day: going for a run before breakfast, in which I recall visiting a particular place for the first time (forevermore I will know the first time I went there), and sitting down for breakfast and saying to myself the name of two more of the guests, so I will remember their names and that they were there.

A key point to note is that the images I have selected are very much unique. I could have remembered sitting down for dinner with the same people on both of these days, but the images would have been difficult to distinguish - unless there was some detail I specially selected to make them unique.

3 January 2016: The image is a moving one. Leaving my sister-in-law's to catch a bus to the coach station for our next trip. This makes the link with my sister-in-law and the images of the previous days and also reminds me that on Sunday the bus does not stop at its usual stop, but we must walk past this to the correct stop. I often use images to capture useful information - and as I review the images at least once per month, I'm reminded of these facts.

4 January 2016: We are at the next destination and out with my nephew-in-law and his family, by the sea. I'm visiting my wife's country after Christmas for a month. We spend time with relatives, though I am still working over the internet. The image from the previous day will remind me that we had travelled on to our next destination. It is Monday. On my mental calendar, I have jumped from Sunday on the right of the January sheet, to Monday on the left of the sheet. This arbitrary separation of days into weeks proves as useful in this process as in organising our lives.

5 January 2016: My nephew-in-law has gone to work and I am setting up a paddling pool for his kids, who have stayed with his wife and her mother (my wife's sister). My particular image is improvising a drain plug, when one of the children, four years old, suggested the top of a soft drink bottle, which worked perfectly. If she turns into an engineer, I will reminisce about this moment!

The theme for the two previous days is water: the sea and the paddling pool. This helps me to remember my image fro the next day...

6 January 2016: My nephew-in-law is back and we go into the nearby town to visit the craft market in the afternoon. We buy some snacks and sit next to a fountain. My image is sitting next to the fountain with my relatives. I think of water (even though the fountain is actually dry).

7 January 2016: My wife and I run with my nephew-in-law's older child by the sea, before they all return home, leaving me on my own for a while. My image is us sitting with the child having a drink as he is tired from running. A second image is me running at my own pace over the same route, remembering I am now on my own.

Refreshing the images

The above seven days make up the first week of this month. As mentioned above, I review every day of the past month. To give an idea of how this works, I'll do a quick run through the above seven images as if it was the start of my review, indicating how long I think each recall would take.

So, I picture myself standing on the square for Friday, my thoughts are something like this, with the images and sometimes sounds coming up to illustrate the thoughts:

Apartment, relatives names, Christmas tree (10 seconds), step right, Saturday, 2016, 2 January, run to new place, breakfast, relatives names (10 seconds), step right, Sunday, 2016, 3 January, walking to the bus stop (10 seconds), stretch over left and back a row, Monday, 2016, 4 January, by the sea with relatives (5 seconds), step right, Tuesday, 2016, 5 January, water, paddling pool, "use the bottle top" (10 seconds), step right, water, sitting by the fountain with relatives (5 seconds), step right, water, drink by the sea, running on my own (10 seconds).

Which adds up to about one minute. Quite often, I am that quick or quicker, skimming over the days in the calender (in fact, I just did a test while taking a break to go to the shops, by going through a month from 2013 - it took me four minutes).

I do often stop to explore some days in a bit more depth, from a few extra seconds to some minutes.

Occassionally, I have a problem remembering an image. When that happens, I usually find carrying on will trigger another association that reminds me. Failing that, I'll come back to it later. I've not lost a day yet.

The daily grind

Going places, meeting people, doing things, all help when it comes to selecting unique memory tags.

But I aim to make tags unique during the most routine of times.

For the following days in this example month, I was basically only eating, working and running. Not only that, it has been a feature of the previous three years that I've spent some of January in the same place when we visit my wife's country. The memories could easily collapse into one generic pseudo memory, but following this process, I remember them all distinctly.

Here's how.

8 January 2016: I have my hair cut, and make a point of remembering the name of the barber in my memory tag. I have a second image of running along the seafront, which feels different now as I am on my own for a few days.


9 January 2016: I'm standing on Saturday again. I wake up and spend the whole day working, forcing myself to leave the apartment before the sun sets to go and look at the sea. That's my memory tag.

10 January 2016: I run for 13 km, covering my usual route twice. This is the furthest I've run since my first marathon back on October. That's my memory tag.

11 January 2016: Long stretch to the left to reach Monday on my mental calendar. My phone beeps to tell me there is a news alert. David Bowie has died. I pre-ordered his new album just three days before. This moment is my memory tag. Plus going for a run on the sand, soaking in the beautiful day and being glad to be alive.

12 January 2016: I have a works meeting on Skype. The I work solidly until I realise I need to buy food. I run to the supermarket as I think it closes at 10 pm. I arrive just before, but find it is open till midnight. My memory tag is running to the supermarket after a long day working. This means I will always now remember the supermarket stays open till midnight.

13 January 2016: My wife comes back from the city and we meet for lunch, then go into town. I decide to buy some fruit after we arrive back, but think the grocer closes at 8 pm, which has already passed. At least I know I can go to the not-so-good supermarket if it's closed, but it is open. My memory tags are lunch with my wife and arriving at the grocer, which closes at 9 pm.

14 January 2016: I interrupt my run along the seafront to stop for a drink with my wife. A nice relaxing moment of calm amongst my deadlines. Worth holding on to.

15 January 2016: Back to Friday again. Two weeks since I visited by sister-in-law on New Year's Day. The image is two steps forwards on my mental calendar. On this day, I went running and it started to rain as I returned. I didn't realise, but my wife and two of her sisters, who had just arrived for the weekend, were sheltering in a café I passed. Running past that café with them inside is my memory tag. It reminds me this was when they arrived and that it was the start of a period of rainstorms.

16 January 2016: My memory tag is walking into town in the afternoon with my wife and taking a road we don't usually take, which brought us out exactly where we wanted to be in the town centre. Useful to remember.

If I think about this particular day, I could probably work out what we did for breakfast, whether I was working on a Saturday again or did other things. It wasn't a particularly memorable day. I'll know my relatives were there and it was probably raining at some point. But this process doesn't unlock a photographic memory or run a movie of what happened.

I capture what I choose to hold onto and, perhaps more importantly, what I refresh during the review process. If I only every think of the road, that is most likely all that will remain of a day like this one.

17 January 2016: Sunday. Another long run. 16 km. Then I met my wife and her sisters for lunch. My memory tag is arriving at the restaurant, capturing the fact I was back from the run and being together for the meal.

18 January 2016: My memory tag is having breakfast at a café with my wife. I was up too late to have breakfast with her sisters as I was tired with running and work, though I saw them before they left for the city.

19 January 2016: I'm on the phone, having paused my run. This one image shows the power of this method for me. I'm on the phone to someone at work about an important event. I remember the conversation and the event. That I had squeezed in a run to have a break from work. The call delayed me on my run, which I was going to interrupt to meet my wife at a café. It made me late. In a review, the image would only take a few seconds to refresh, but if I dwell on it, I remember all the things I attached to it for posterity.

Thinking of it now, I have proof of this power. I cannot tell you for sure what I did for breakfast or dinner that day. What was on the news. Whether it rained at any point. But I can remember very clearly all of the things I just said that image captured.

20 January 2016: Another key date due to something that happened with work. That is my image. On the phone again. This time in the same café where I went on to meet my wife the day before.

As I said above, we tend to spend some of January in this town by the sea, even though I will generally be working remotely. I find it interesting that sometimes I will be reviewing memories of this place when I am far away, sometimes when I am back again. I can sit in this café and think of the memory tags showing me in the same seat, or one of the others, remembering the exact date and the surrounding context. I don't remember EVERY time I was in the café. In fact, I will have forgotten more visits than those I choose to remember.

21 January 2016: Thursday and we visit a neighbouring town as we do whenever we stay for any extended length of time. More by fortune than planning, those past visits pegged to my mental calendar have also been on Thursdays. But we also visited the same town in the years before I began this process and I am hard pressed to say what years, let alone the date or what we did. I will remember this date, arriving for breakfast, where we had lunch, the weather.

22 January 2016: Today I upped my long run to 20 km. It was our last day, so we went to a favourite place to eat in the evening. Two images.

23 January 2016: We decided to stay another day, so went down to the sea and then to the café, which serves soup in the afternoon. Two images.

Recent days are hardest

I've commented elsewhere on this blog that the most recent days give me most problems to remember using this technique. That's because there is so much that is fresh and it may be a while before something really stands out as the best memory tag.

With the above two days, it was a while before I automatically knew the long run was the Friday and the walk to the sea was the Saturday. When I had that clear, those became settled as the images for those days.

24 January 2016: My image is arriving back in the city.

25 January 2016: Onto the last row of the calendar for January, staying with other relatives. This was another period of near identical days, where I didn't even leave the house. My tag for Monday is watching a television programme, the second week of a new series. So it sets the start of series in time. The programme is on most days, but I don't put each episode onto my mental calendar.

26 January 2016: With the theme of television, my tag for this day is a foreign series I discovered on the internet while at the coast. Again, it fixes it in time. I remember watching the specific episode as I caught my wife up with what had happened.

27 January 2016: I have have four years of full calendars now. The link under 'about me' to my refresh technique tells you how I keep those refreshed. Just to say, this morning I reviewed the image for 27 January 2013 and it includes news of a local tragedy. The third anniversary is reported in the local media today. That's my image.

One of the benefits of this process is I remember exactly where and when I heard this news. When other people say they cannot believe it is so long ago, I can travel over every day between then and now. 

28 January 2016: Another change of scene. Travelling to one of the sisters we were with on the coast. The image of being on the journey is enough for me to remember our departure and arrival.

29 January 2016: Orientating myself, Friday has come round again. Three steps forward on my calendar to come to New Year's Day. This day was a birthday party. I remember the fact and the names and faces of three people I was introduced to so I will know them again and whenever that might be I can say, "We met at the party on 29 January 2016". Sometimes I find this ability freaks people out a little!

30 January 2016: I go with my nephew-in-law to a sports shop, preparing for tomorrow.

31 January 2016: I run a 10 km race. I remember who was there that I knew and my finish time.

Thinking of that race - and some of the other events here - gives me pleasure to know the day is not lost into the mists of time. There are some days when I think, "This is one of the happiest days of my life". That feeling is something I try to include in the image as well.

That's a month. Today being 1 February, I was due to review all of those images, then add a new one for today.

Tomorrow, I will start the full month review on 2 January.


It you are thinking of starting a similar experiment, you may find it encouraging that I find the oldest days are easier to remember. I've recalled the images so many times. The landscape of my mental calendar for 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 is now very familiar. Once I have found the square I am looking for, I'm away.

If you go to the oldest posts on this blog, you can read through how things changed as the number of days has grown. You will also find out about some of the benefits I find being able to remember brings me.

One thing that has not happened is developing hyperthymesia.

Hyperthymesia is the ability to recall all details clearly. My process is a discipline of memory. At the moment, I feel comfortable that it is sustainable for a few more years yet. Beyond that, I expect I'll need to develop new methods so the time spent on refreshing images does not distract from living.

But I do sometimes feel I can drop through an image on my mental calendar and be back in the moment, then explore the rest of the day, relying on what I might call my more conventional memory.

If you do decide to give this a go yourself, please do leave comments or contact me on Facebook or Twitter to let me know how you get on.

• Please click here if you read the whole of this post, so I will know - or 
• Click here if you also plan to try remembering every day that passes yourself.

End date

The death of David Bowie 18 months after he was diagnosed with cancer - and the way he used that time creatively - made me think how I would spend my last months in a similar situation.

This prompted me to start an experiment as I can clearly visualise the period of 18 months thanks to this process of remembering every day that passes. I'm imagining that my time runs out half way through next year.
http://lembransation.blogspot.com/2016/01/mortality.html

Of course, I don't really believe it will happen so there is an artificiality about the exercise. But when I refresh the memory tags from 18 months ago, I tell myself this is how long I would have. That is the stretch of time to fill.

I am trying to value the days as if they are my last. Spending a bit more time with people I love - and giving them more attention when we are together. Being more cheerful with shop assistants and waiting staff. Doing - or planning to do during the next 18 months - some of the things I've always intended.

This would be my last full year to fill and I'm already approaching the end of the first month. I look to the right and there is the end date I have selected for this experiment.

Something happened today as I ran my refresh technique, recalling two images per month from January 2014 (days 27 and 28 of the month - see the refresh technique link under "about me" for details).

First the years lost their anchor. I've always felt the current year is centrally placed in my mental landscape. I step onto the calendars to my left to go to earlier years. This can be a little disorientating at the turn of the year when everything moves (read about that here). As I've started looking to my notional end date in this experiment, I suddenly thought this calendar is the whole of my life. And it lost its anchor, became detached, floating beneath me as I floated above it in my mind's eye.

Then I thought that my real end date was somewhere there. I couldn't know where the memory tags would stop and I would leave no further mark, but somewhere down there on those months was the transition.

Then it struck me that time would end for me.

My calendar would end. It does not stretch forever to my right, but at the end date, there is no more calendar.

I know the sun will continue to rise after I have gone. There will be people who remember me, at least for a while. But I won't be there.

If I am somewhere, then there is infinity ahead of me and time would lose its meaning - as Amazing Graces says with proper understanding of infinity, "We've no less days to sing God's praise than when we've first begun." Everyone I know, the solar system, the universe itself would pass away. For that to be bearable, the new experience would truly have to be amazing - or how could it be grace and not torture? Days could no longer exist. This life would surely fade into a different perspective, a brief flicker, a different reality, a dream that has passed.  

With that it felt like my calendar was floating in a void, with me far above it. There was my beginning and my end and that was all there was.

This is all obvious, of course. These are the days of our life and we should live them to the full.

Now I have felt it in a new way, thanks to this process and this experiment. It feels profound, but it is still a new feeling and I still have to learn the lessons it brings.

Mega memory capacity

How soon will our brains fill up?

A new study by scientists at the Salk Institute published in eLife has generated studies around the world claiming: The human brain can store 10 TIMES as many memories as previously thought, says study (Daily Mail).

That's one petabyte of data, or 1 x 10^15 bytes (1 followed by 10 zeroes). One of the researchers (Terry Sejnowski) is quoted as saying this is the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.

The above report says: "One petabyte is about the same as about 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text or about the same as 13.3 years of HD-TV video."

The reason for the 10 fold increase (in my take on the research) is the researchers believe that the synapses that effectively code information can exist in 26 different sizes, instead of 3 (small, medium, large) as previously thought.

This finding comes from fine measurements of the volume of the synapse spine head in the rats brain investigated: "Spine head volumes ranged in size over a factor of 60 from smallest to largest while the coefficient of variation of volume of any given size was 0.083 and was constant across the range of sizes."


That's 26 different sizes, each with a tolerance of about 8%.

In a computer a byte of data coded in a semiconductor gate, or a magentic domain on a storage disk, exists in one of two states.

A synapse can exist in one of 26 states.

The researchers say this is equivalent to 4.7 bytes of data. A byte is either in the state 0 or 1; it has two states. Two raised to the power 4.7 = 2^4.7 = 26.

The theoretical storage capacity is staggering. Though we don't seem able to retrieve the contents of 20 million filing cabinets, I should at least be able to fill a few more years of mental calendars with memory tags in this process of remembering every day that passes.

Mortality

I had already pre-ordered David Bowie's new album Blackstar and had it waiting on my phone when the same phone flashed up the news he had died. His music was the soundtrack to my teenage years: I bought the albums I had missed then everything he released. He was one of the few major artists I ventured to see in concert.

I've listened to Blackstar now and watched the video. It was released on Bowie's birthday, 8 January. He passed away two days later and the world learned the shock news the day after.

Tony Visconti, long-time producer of Bowie albums said, "He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was not different from his life — a work of Art. He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift."

Not only that, a theatre work called Lazarus, co-written by Bowie and featuring his music, opened in New York in December.

It seems Bowie was planning more recording, but was interrupted.

His cancer was diagnosed 18 months before. Strangely, my last post here, just a few hours before the news reached me, I called "Almost a sense of mourning", about how with the turn of the year my mental calendar shuffles to the left. Images that were "this year" are now last year. "Last year" slips away to be a more distant completed page.

These pages now stretch back, covered in images, to when I began this process of remembering every day that passes on 17 December 2011.

What struck me is how clearly I can now see 18 months. Standing on my mental calendar, I look to the right and there is the spot to step on to. That's how many days I would have.

A niece, my wife's sister's daughter, died of cancer a little over a year after it was diagnosed. Those key dates are in the images on my calendar, together with the days when I saw her. It is a way to never forget someone.

I don't know how and when I will die, just that somewhere in the pages to my right, there is an end.

Maybe there will be a diagnosis and time to prepare. Maybe it will simply be a day that began as any other.

When I was a young man at college, having my horizon's expanded, for a while I thought it clever to say that we are all terminal cases really and should live every day as if it could be our last - though not as if it is going to be.

I can see 18 months now. I can walk over the days that have not yet been filled. As an experiment, I am imagining they are all I have left. What difference will this perspective make to how I live them?

Almost a sense of mourning

2015 was a year full of events, like those that came before.

Even days of routine exist separately in my memory since I began following these techniques to remember every day that passes. They are not merged into one smudge, representing a week or a month doing the same things thanks to the images pinned to my mental calendar that make every day unique.

I recall the images with the full date, including the year, necessary as the years have piled up. Even so, I realised today that it makes a difference when a year ends and a new one begins.

In my long run through of past years, I remember two days per month. Yesterday, it was the 9th and 10th of each month in 2011 - 2013. Today the same days in 2014 to the present.

It struck me that I recalled the dates in 2014 as being last year. But they are that no longer now we have entered 2016.

I felt the year slipping away. Yet, the days are still fresh when I call up the memory tags, just more distant. Like departed friends.

The turning of the year reminds me these days are gone and only live on in my mind.

Four full years covered with memory tags

Happy New Year! It's 2016.

Another year of my mental calendar has been filled. The year 2015 has a theme of travel between my wife's country and my own, punctuated with elderly relatives suffering with their age (a broken femur, blood pressure out of control and increased memory loss in three of our parents).

It was the year I continued the annual progression in road races to marathon distance, though not in April as planned, due to another injury, but October.

I have still not lost a day, though had an issue with one. The memory tag for 19 February 2013 suddenly eluded me. I tried to tease it out using all the techniques I have developed, but it was gone. In the process, I remembered other things about the day and those surrounding it, so I still had memories to fit into my life story. From these I created a new memory tag to pin to my mental calendar. Perhaps my original choice will come back to me one day, but the tag is not important, it is the memories of the day, for which the tag is just a catalyst.

I changed my review technique a year ago and it has served me well. I have a two-day process. On the first day I recall the images for consecutive days of each month of 2011 - 2013. On the second day, it is two days per month for 2014 to the present, then a run through every day of last 31 days. Today being the 8th January, I have recalled the images for the 7th and 8th of each month from January 2014. Sometimes the sequence switches to start with an even day - it depends on how many days in the month.

I still do a separate more detailed review of the past 6 months, calling up two days per week. It is Friday, so I recall Thursday and Friday of each week since July 2015. But I'm becoming much more relaxed about this. In the past, the windows would overlap: tomorrow my window would be Friday and Saturday. Now I sometimes leave it for a day and dispense with the overlap.

I've not done a memory reboot for a while. This is when I've dumped the longer review and gone for sequential days from the very beginning, covering perhaps three or four months per day until I'm up to date.

But there is something special about going day by day and sometime I interrupt the longer review to go sequentially through a particular month.

The final change this past year is to relax more into the process. I try to see each year as a landscape that is familiar and welcoming, rather than a string of days where I fear the chain breaking.

My aim for this year, my fifth calendar year remembering every day that passes, is to become more adept. I tend to distract myself with interesting memories, then life intervenes and I have to grab another slot of spare time to continue. Then I run the risk of being distracted from the present by trying to complete the review. My hope is to become more confident in the landscape of the year so I can hop through it quickly, firing up and refreshing the memory tags, keeping them fresh and there if I want them.

The process continues to be enriching in so many ways. I cannot imagine returning to living in a fog where I cannot remember what I was doing last week or last month, let alone five years ago.