Starting over

 It has been a while since I have posted on this blog about remembering every day that passes.

As I have described in previous posts, the system of reviewing the memory tags pinned to my mental calendar became unsustainable after about ten years. It became harder to refresh the images.

Perhaps if I was more adept at standard memorising techniques, of the sort that enable people to memorise sequences of playing cards or the digits if pi, I would have been able to keep going indefinitely.

However, I found as I passed over days where the images did not come easily to mind, I became increasingly demoralised and reluctant to try. Efforts to recapture the images by retrospectively filling diaries or filling phone apps with photos I had taken did not provide a solution.

And so I had to admit that, for me, my limit was ten years.

But I had gained so much from this process, I decided I would simply start again.

I took that decision on 01 June 2023. 

Following the same processes I have developed and described in this blog, I have been adding an image to each day since then as a memory tag. I refresh them in the same way as before. The numbers are manageable. All being equal, I should be able to keep this up for a total of ten years.

At the start of each month, I do range back over my mental calendar, starting in 2012, the first full year in this process. Those images are well entrenched and I can bring most of them back when I try. In the intervening years, I can at least orientate myself by significant periods or events, even if the images for many days have faded from my mental eye. 

It is more recent years where the blanks predominate, as the reviewing process buckled under its own weight. At least until 01 June 2023. Then I am back with fully populated calendars.