Learning to Remember

December 15 – 5 Minutes

Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010.

These fruits that grow in Jamaica remind me on little miniature brains (but they taste really good with eggs).

This was sort of a good exercise, except by nature of the exercise and having been reflecting on the past year for over a week now, mostly what came to mind were the big life-changing moments of 2010 or just the really exciting moments. I wasn’t able to capture the finer, less obvious moments that I wish I could still remember.

1. ideaSPARK 2010: a complete success. I crave recognition for my hard work but don’t know how to accept it very well…. so…
2. The moment I realized I found my passion. (probably somewhere between when I heard “hey, great event” from my grandmother, House Representative Deborah Ross, Wayne Sutton, Sumit Vohra, Scott Stratten, David Millsaps, my volunteers and my presenters in a row).
3. Volunteering for Grow & Share at Bonnaroo 2010. Physical limits tested to the max.
4. My first Bassnectar show in Tennessee
5. Staying up all night one hot summer night and connecting with my sister openly and honestly in a way we probably never had before. We even wrote a letter to each other to make sure we remembered that moment. Oh yes, I still remember it.
6. Seeing inside the NPR studio and watching Frank Stasio plug the awesomeness of PechaKucha that was my sweat and blood!
7. The day when my sister and I were in The New York Post {love!} one lovely Monday morning, followed by the excitement that my sister was offered a position with Carrot Creative on her blog. It brings tears to my eyes thinking about it (is that weird?)…
8. Being proud of my sister (that’s pretty much every day, though).
9. Aha! reading Linchpin
10. Meeting Regina Twine: friends at first sight!
11. Summer… gosh it was so nice and warm.
12. The taxi drive from Montego Bay, Jamaica to Negril, Jamaica and realizing in that hour the difference between Americans and Jamaicans.
13. Conversations had at the Brazen Careerist DC launch party
14. SPARKcon, again. AMAZING.

Sometimes I wish we could just attach a video camera to our eyes so that we could replay any moment we chose. That would take a lot of space though.

A theme I’ve also noticed is that I seem to remember moments during periods of travel more than moments stuck in between my normal routine. Maybe that’s a good excuse for traveling more often, even if just to the next town over or somewhere I’ve never been before. If I go somewhere I’ve absolutely never been before, then I’m creating a memory in that physical location for the first time and I’m more likely to remember it than had I done the same thing in a geographic location that I’ve been many times before.

Does anyone else have a hard time remembering parts of their lives and have you done anything to help you remember more? (And I don’t mean textbook material or knowledge, but rather the emotional/experiential part of your memory).

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In participation with #reverb10.