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Friday 26 January 2018

Six years later

I began remembering every day that passes on 17 December 2011.

The sixth anniversary has passed and here we are in 2018, over 2200 days later.

I'm still going strong, though recently switched the nature of the long recall of days I do every month to refresh the images pinned to my mental calendar as memory tags.

Last time, I start on 1 January 2016 and went through the whole year, day by day. Then the same with 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011 (much of 2011 is blank as there were few landmarks I was able to identify retrospectively).

I started with 2016 because in the previous strategy of jumping through the months, recalling two weeks chunks, was becoming increasingly confusing and I'd struggle to complete the final year or two in the time available before I had to start again. So I took it leisurely and sequentially, which makes it much easier to find the tags.

Then I started again with 2011. I'm currently up to August 2013 and fit in a few months each day, with no real pressure as to when I finish. I'd like to do so in less than a month, just because that is the longest I've ever left a memory tag before refreshing it. I'm not sure how well they will survive otherwise.

I still do the last month of tags, morning and night. Every now and then, I'll go through the past 6 months sequentially or two days per week, as of old.

There is still a lot I get out of the grounding of recalling these past days. Although as they have grown to over 6 years - over 10% of my life - the period I can remember day-by-day does not seem so different to the earlier foggy period.

The past is another world, even when I can revisit the memories.