I think it used to apply to me more – as a kid if people asked me something along the lines of “what did you do today?” I would automatically say “I don’t know,” and then if I thought they wanted a real answer, I would think for a bit. But I could almost always answer after thinking for a couple seconds.
I think part of your confusion comes from conflating experiential memory with verbal memory. In the essay, he also mentions that he’s really good at remembering arbitrary sequences of digits; I presume that extends to things such as grocery lists, and possibly also intentions that he’s formed. For me, I have very few memories of my childhood or even specific experiential memories of more recent years, but I have no trouble remembering what I need to do in a day.
(I do keep a LOT of lists and always have. But I have no idea if this is related.)
Being around people who value talking about abstract things makes me more attuned to the “word content” of the day. It’s like, I can remember going to work on a sunny day or I can remember someone asking her colleague “how do you see/define the depth of a surface in a painting”.
I think it used to apply to me more – as a kid if people asked me something along the lines of “what did you do today?” I would automatically say “I don’t know,” and then if I thought they wanted a real answer, I would think for a bit. But I could almost always answer after thinking for a couple seconds.
I think part of your confusion comes from conflating experiential memory with verbal memory. In the essay, he also mentions that he’s really good at remembering arbitrary sequences of digits; I presume that extends to things such as grocery lists, and possibly also intentions that he’s formed. For me, I have very few memories of my childhood or even specific experiential memories of more recent years, but I have no trouble remembering what I need to do in a day.
(I do keep a LOT of lists and always have. But I have no idea if this is related.)
Being around people who value talking about abstract things makes me more attuned to the “word content” of the day. It’s like, I can remember going to work on a sunny day or I can remember someone asking her colleague “how do you see/define the depth of a surface in a painting”.