Memory is associative. I have a really, really good memory, but it’s mostly because I know how to exploit that associativity.

If you asked me what I did for the last two weeks, I’d have to find “anchor” memories to relate to other memories. E.g., I remember a conversation at work on Friday, which I know was the result of a thing I did earlier that day, which I had talked about doing on Thursday, etc. I can reconstruct things, but part of that is “digging” through memories to find anchor points.

I feel like I know the answer to something, and it’s usually right, but I don’t have a recollection exactly of how I know it.

If you asked me about last Wednesday or the one before, I could probably tell you eventually. You might get a lot of detail about the rest of the week along the way, because I’d have to piece together what I did and which day Wednesday was.

It would be about the same if you asked me about the current weather moments after I walked inside. I might be able to tell you, but I’m going to have to build the memories on the spot.

Stress can wreck memory.

I am not great with faces, apparently, because people recognize me but I don’t recognize them, a lot. Like, no shit the FedEx guy bringing stuff to my work recognized me from grade school. Some people are REALLY good at recognizing people.

In general I’d say I am much better at figuring things out, than remembering them, and it has ever been so. Even in school I passed algebra by remembering the quadratic formula and just figuring out the rest of it each time. I don’t do things the same way every time. When I try to do things by rote, without thinking I fuck them up.

If it’s bothering you, try mindfulness - throughout the day take a breath, relax and become more aware of what you are doing and hearing and seeing and feeling. Get in the habit of paying close attention.

But I do think it’s normal to sort of discard a lot and only remember a little.

My memory has been somewhat blurry/fuzzy since 2011, so yeah. After coming out from a surgery where I was under longer than the surgeons thought I was gonna, it’s been a bit fuzzy. I can remember things from a long time ago, but ask me pre-2011, middle of tweenhood and below, is hit or miss what I remember. Even after then, it can sometimes feel a little hit or miss whether I remember an event that happened.

Fire at a nearby apartment building a couple years ago? Remember. The song I was listening to 10 minutes ago? Absolutely no clue. Name of someone in my ENGL 101 class I’ve been attending all quarter? No clue for almost all of them. The time my parents got a Sonic Mega Collection game for me and my brothers when I was 4-5 years old? Absolutely remember that!

Recently, my life feels like a blur, like I dont really remember what happened even in the past 2 weeks, and this has cause me some anxiety. […] How much of your life do you remember, like do you only remember major events in your life, or do you remember like what you have been doing for the past 2 weeks. […]

I experience the same sort of feelings. What I find helps me a little bit is to journal at the end of the night and document what I did during the day and what happened during the day. This helps me reflect and ground myself on what goes on around me. Instead of me just existing with events passively happening around me, it forces me to sort of anchor events to my life. Having this sort of stuff documented also allows me to reflect on it in the future.

The more unique a bit of knowledge is, plus the more interesting it was at the time, multiplied by how frequently you have thought about it since, is basically the formula for the strength of a memory. So a relatively uninteresting thing, you have done some minor variation of hundreds of times and haven’t really thought about since, is gonna take alot of effort to willfully recall. You would need some sorf of trigger to easily recall it, as triggering a memory is a much more powerful way to recall it.

You are normal, as you get older, even just early adulthood, more and more of your life will feel that way in hindsight. You don’t do as many super memorable things as you used to, and you just have more and more stuff packed into your brain. Makes it harder for individual memories to compete, more and more of them will just fade out as unimportant things you don’t prioritise remembering, or even recording in the first place.

You probably have heard people older than you remark that life goes by faster and faster as we get older, this is mostly the cause of that feeling. Obviously, time is moving the same speed, you are just making fewer important memories worth recalling.

If you went to a concert this week, you would probably have an easier time remembering what day it was, or what the drive to and from it was like. But if the whole week was TV shows, videogames and meals primarily designed to be thrown together for sustenance, none of it will be super memorable.

You can technically put effort into remembering even mundane stuff, just focus on it more as you are doing it, and repeatedly practice recalling it as you go. It might be a fun exercise for a week just to prove you can do it if you want to. But it would be alot of effort to keep up for longer. If you are otherwise happy with how things are going, no real need to change though. And if you do want things to be more memorable, find ways to do more unique things that you have an interest in and that are worth spending time thinking about afterward too.

Edit: me personally, As with most people in this thread, I have a very good long term memory, but a very bad working memory, and almost no willful recall, I generally leave visible reminders or set alarms for stuff I need to remember “tomorrow”. If someone asks me to do something, and I don’t do it within 15 seconds, I won’t recall that I was asked unless something triggers the memory. So I generally do stuff right away, but I am also easily distracted. And I don’t always remember that I need to warn people to re-ask me if it has been a minute or so and I didn’t do it, but I have slowly gotten better as it works into my rote/routine memory to sequentially trigger that response based on the incoming cue. Needs to be more consistent to become rote.

And yeah, Autism for sure, ADHD probable but haven’t checked.

I’m probably wrong but:

Check your house for Carbon Monoxide.

I’d say… wait, what was the question?