I’ve come to the realization that my memory has suffered a setback that doesn’t seem to be recoverable…and it’s incredibly depressing to me. I have long found pleasure in the thoughts, experiences, moments and people stored in the vast section of my memory. I’ve worked in customer service with pretty much every job I’ve had, and took pride in remembering my customers.

The first time I ever noticed that there were blank spots in my memory where it was once filled was in 2005 after I had back surgery. The area of my memory that was most affected was people’s names. I would know the person but couldn’t recall their name immediately, and this would be people I interacted with on a regular basis, though not daily. I had read that there are long term effects of anesthesia, and that I was probably experiencing a setback because of that. It was true, because my memory did bounce back about 6 months later. People laughed it off and told me that it was also due to getting older.

I had surgery again last year and anticipated that it would happen again, and it has, but it’s not coming back. It’s been 10 months, so maybe this round of anesthesia is taking longer to wear off. I really don’t know.

I am having a hard time remembering things that I should remember. Sure, some things might be minor details, but I feel that I NEED those details. I need to remember conversations and events and plans and whatnot. It’s important to me! There are some times where I don’t even remember any part of a conversation.

So to combat this, I am going to TRY to make the time to journal every day in my handwritten journal to remember the details of the day so that I always have them. I thought about the pros and cons of handwritten versus computer, and I’m hoping that actually writing it down will help my memory retain the events better. Of course, writing them on my computer or a phone app or whatever would make them easily searchable, so we’ll see how it all goes.

What I write will most likely be more about the day’s events and less about my feelings, which is what I usually use my handwritten journal for. I don’t want the idea of writing daily to be burdensome, so I’m going to come up with a few prompts to answer every day and plan for maybe 5 to 10 minutes of my time.

I also found someone who has 365 Daily Prompts to record every day for 5 years. I’m thinking about maybe answering that prompt every day, as well.

How is your memory? What do you do to help remember things? 

“Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.” – Mark Twain

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