My Crazy Autobiographical Memory

A few weeks ago, I saw a interview with Marilu Henner of Taxi fame on television. She was talking about her super memory which allows her to recall down to the date. I have seen other interviews with another woman who has this kind of memory. The actual name is a Autobiographical memory and I believe that this is the kind of memory I have.

For years I have known my memory is different. I can recall events in my life in vivid detail starting with a memory from the crib. My mind is a Rolodex of sorts, it is categorized by year,month and event. I can flip back to a year and remember certain events. The one thing that separates me from Marilu is that I cannot always remember that date of said event sometimes it is just the year. My mind is full of events and stories that are brought up by the simplest of things. It often is a constant running film in my head.

I've always been good with names which I attribute to being from a large family. When you have 14 cousins, you have to be good with names. My family members are also good with names and often we will remember each others friends names also. We do spend a lot of time talking about past events and recalling, so we might all have a touch of this kind of memory. We all love to play trivia and watch Jeopardy! for this reason, it suits our memories.

With my memory comes another skill, I have a built in GPS. When I was about four years old, I led my parents to their car in the LA county fair parking lot. Neither of them could remember where we parked but I could. I still to this day can go somewhere once and remember how to get there forever. I rarely get lost even when I try to get lost ( a game I would play for fun with my friend Jen in high school)

In fact, the other day I was live tweeting during the final stage of the AMGEN Tour of California and sharing the useless facts that I have stored up about that part of Los Angeles. I think people thought I had looked them up but was actually just citing them off the top my head. I have lots of useless information like that floating around. I would make a fabulous tour guide.

It's not something I often talk about and really have never thought I was any different until I was older. I will often remember people after meeting them once and when they don't remember me, I just pretend to not know them either. I recently freaked Andrea out by remember a outfit she wore when I went to work with her in 1990. I can also remember the outfit that I wore that day. It's nothing unusual, I can tell you about many days and events like that.

I am a reader, I love to read books. I very rarely re-read books because I can remember almost everything that I read. It's very boring for me to re-read books since I remember them almost verbatim.

Through a recent conversation with a scientist friend of mine Beth, I decided to open up and share this on my blog. One of the reasons behind this blog is a way for me to write the events down and get them out of my head. The blog has become my autobiography of sorts and a way for me to put a memory down for good and then de-clutter the running rolodex in my head. One habit that Marilu and the other people with super memory's have is the have written down events. I never did this until I started blogging and it wasn't a intentional reason behind me starting the blog. It just sort of morphed into having that purpose.

I am very fortunate, I am able to shut the memories off and really don't live in the past. It's just a cool party trick of sorts and something I didn't realize was unusual. The purpose of this blog is to share and maybe inform you of why I don't forget things. Warning, I rarely,rarely forget things just so you know the next time you tell me something. That said, my short term memory is horrible these days. I used to never need a grocery list or to write down appointments. Now my brain is overloaded with 50 million things between myself,Marty and the kids, I forget a lot of short term things.

Just thought I would share and explain one of the reasons I often blog about things in the past. I have found it really is a great benefit for sharpening your memory. So I am improving my already good memory while blogging about some great times in my life.

Getting fit weekly report

So my first week of really trying to get fit went well. I got up early every morning and worked out instead of going back to bed. I've been using resistance bands to strengthen my arms, legs and core. I have been sore but the good kind of sore, so I know that I am doing something right.

I'm doing a half and hour in the morning and plan on adding riding in the afternoons. Every afternoon this week has been busy so far. We are going on a long ride tomorrow morning though.

Portion control is another biggie. I've been measuring all my food and eating only the recommended serving size. So far I haven't been hungry at all. Drinking water has been a big issue in the past for me but I find myself actually craving it now. In the morning's I have been drinking water before coffee!

I am looking foward to the payoff in the future!