Me again.
I think I’ve probably mentioned my really bad memory before, but I can’t recall. It used to bother me a lot that I have this sort of progressive amnesia in which anything over a week old tends to fade and blend into one event that I can’t really conjure up in any meaningful way. Not only do I forget names and places and dates, I forget the context; you know how you can often place yourself back in time by remembering how you felt? Well, I can’t. And I don’t know why. For a while after I realized I had this tendency, I was bothered by it. It made everything seem surreal, as if I was just drifting along within this short time frame that had no relationship to anything else in my past. It upset me because I have this need for connection, for collecting the experience more than the event itself. After a while, I started to treasure the surreality, and it became a game, trying to wrap my mind around how the hell I managed to end up here and now. But I still had this immense sense of displacement, and of not participating in my own life. I suspect that a good part of that is being so busy that I don’t give myself time to stop and think about what I’m actually doing. I value action and continuous motion, and downtime confuses me. Therefore, I had little time to really absorb anything before moving on. I don’t know how that’s changed recently, but it has. If anything, I’m busier than I’ve ever been. But it seems like there’s a new level of intensity with everything I do, and that gives me more of a sense of connection to it. I’m enjoying both the good and bad, because I’m so aware of them now. And I suspect that for a long time, I wasn’t doing a very good job of feeling anything at all. So, that’s enough self-evaluative bullshit for tonight. My whole point is this: I know what it’s like to be a goldfish. You know how supposedly goldfish have two-second memories? Which means that everything is always new to them? It’s kind of awesome in a way. That’s how I live. Whatever I’ve been doing for the past week or so becomes my current frame of reference. Right now, I’m getting up before the sun, and driving halfway across the universe to write code nine hours a day. I go to the gym, take classes, and try to squeeze in social activities whenever I can. I’ve already forgotten what it was like during those six months I didn’t go to an office at all, and spent half my day outside, doing work whenever I felt like it, at the coffeeshop or in the middle of the night. Thing is, I go back to that in a little over a month. It’ll be brand new to me, and I’m going to enjoy the hell out if it. I can’t wait! Jenni