prompted by this tweet thread

why do i want to track everything in databases? because my brain tracks nothing related to time on its own. it doesn’t save timestamps when it saves memories.

any time i need to place a remembered event in time, it requires effort to re-derive where it sits in the timeline from landmarks.

only the present moment exists, the past and the future are extremely blurry.

it’s sort of like being high all the time

this moment is all that exists. so, i regularly look clueless because i have no context, no yesterday to relate it to

i don’t remember what i had for breakfast this morning, how i took my coffee, whether i showered recently (it might have been recent!!!!), when i ate last, if i still have toilet paper in the house, when i bought the food in my fridge

i don’t remember when we last spoke, or when so and so came over and lent me a cup of sugar (oh crap how long has it been? how long does a normal person take to return a cup? have i passed that societal boundary yet??), what clothes i wore yesterday, how long since i last did laundry, how many clean socks i probably have left

i have almost no object permanence

i don’t remember how many charge cords i own, or where i put them, so i buy lots of cheap ones and just spread them around so when they disappear it’s no big deal. same with headphones. inanimate objects often leave my life of their own free will, and sometimes they come back, sometimes after going through the wash, sometimes weeks later 😛

i have extras of lots of things that i lost and replaced and found the original

i don’t remember that i borrowed a book from you, where i put it down in my house, how long ago it was, how much of it i’ve read, when you might be expecting it back (again, how long is acceptable to society? did i hold on to it for months before i even started reading it? are you the kind of person that would be mad that i forgot i had your stuff?)

i don’t remember that i have 400+ games in steam waiting for me to play them until i open steam and look at the list. i don’t remember that i have a similar list of books to read until i look at my shelf or my list (this is why i’ve started buying physical books, there must be countless more waiting in my kindle that i’ve forgotten until i check it).

when i go to the doctor, if they want me to come back for a followup, i tell them, "i’m the kind of person that if we don’t set up a followup appointment right now and put it in my phone right now, i’ll disappear and you’ll never see me again. you’ll call me in 3 years and i’ll be like "oh i just saw you a year ago, right?""

(i just figured out that last one like yesterday)

i have no idea what’s in the 15 years of boxes piled up in my spare bedroom, i just know that they’re "important" and every time i open one to try and whittle it down i get decision paralysis and close it back up in defeat.

anything in a closed cabinet, outside my field of vision, disappears from my world. it no longer exists until i re-open the cabinet.

this is why there is a pile of toilet paper and a pile of paper towels in plain view in my bathroom, so i can visually see how much i have left. i live alone now. there’s no one else to buy toilet paper if i run out.

it’s like living in one of those movies where the guy wakes up every morning and there’s postit notes on his bathroom mirror saying "this is your name, this is your job, so-and-so is trying to kill you but you don’t know why yet"

i almost want to cry right now

(EDIT: Please note that this post is titled november 1st, when today is actually november 2nd. I’m leaving it because it’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about)