2021-09-25 - Terrible with Dates

I like to think my memory is pretty good. I can remember song lyrics and movie quotes. I can remember classes, function names and programming concepts. I can imagine locations in my head. I can remember math and physics concepts even if I haven’t used them in a while, but I am terrible at remembering dates.

It seems like my brain strips away date information from whatever I’ve learned. It could be a historical fact or personal information. It could be something that happened to me. I can remember the event but for some reason I have difficulty recalling when it happened. Not only that but I have a hard time keeping track of the order of events. Did I go visit my parents before or after I got a hair cut?

It seems like my brain prefers to arrange information based on a physical rather than a chronological similarities. I can picture most of the houses I’ve lived in and where everything would have been but I struggle to recall when we would have moved into them. If you ask me where something is I might be able to figure it out but if you ask me when something happened or if one thing happened before another I probably won’t be able to tell you.

I think some of this is because of my eyes. Not being able to see well, I have learned to focus on and memorize where things are and what they look like. That way I can easily find those things even if I can’t really see them. I can navigate through a place or recognize something from far away. Concentrating on the physical aspects of things has probably made me less aware of the timing of things as that’s less critical to me.

I also notice that I’m better at remember what something looks like then what happened at an event. I can tell stories fairly well, I think, but I can’t recall them. If you ask me what happened I’d probably say “I don’t know”.

Another of those brain oddities.