Total (AutoBio) Recall ‘18
and Other Ways the Second-of-the-Day Project Hacked My Brain
The original version of this story ran in 2014, and has been updated for 2018.
Reflect for a moment on your 2018. What comes to mind? An exotic vacation? Transitioning into a new home, city or job? A friend or family member’s wedding? Chances are a few special events immediately come to the forefront. Not surprising. These events serve as temporal landmarks that help us better connect to our past, allowing us to structure our future, and motivate us to becoming more goal-oriented in the present.
But what happens to the rest of the year? Those forgotten moments that comprise the conceptual landscape of a vast desert on the road trip between temporal landmarks — hours lost at the café, behind your office desk, or binge watching Netflix on your couch? Recurrent, ordinary events like these retreat into the deep recesses of the mind and are rarely heard or seen again (at a conscious level, anyway). You maintain sense that these events happened over a period of time, but specificities blur together to form a shapeless, amalgamated feeling about that period in your life (“yeah, sounds like something I would have done in 2005…ish”). It’s arguably important that these commonplace events happened — afterall, it’s not just about the destination, it’s the journey, right?
What I’m getting at here is that memory — specifically, autobiographical recall — is anything but absolute. Autobiographical recall is relative to the perceived significance of events taking place. Let’s say your landmark-worthy vacation of last year lasted 8 days. That’s just 2.2% of the 365 days that comprised 2018. Yet looking back, this event may feel much, much greater than “just 2.2%” of the year (or any self-demarcated era for that matter). And, increasingly so as we age! Off the top of my head, I cannot tell you more than a handful of events that happened in 2010, but that one day (0.27%) on top of Machu Picchu as the clouds lifted off the mountaintops at sunrise can feel like 70% of that year.
This was my second go-around with the second-of-the-day project (first in 2014). I quickly rediscovered many of the familiar experiences, struggles, and brain hacks I felt from four years ago. This journey again took the passive comfort of natural autobiographical recall processing and threw it out the window, as I prepared for another unrelenting year that forced me to approach each day linearly and absolutely. These are a few of my observations.
Just a week or two in, it felt like my memory was on steroids.
I wasn’t just filming a few seconds at random every day. I found myself always paying attention, hyper-aware of my surroundings and instinctively ready to quickdraw my iPhone X in order to capture the perfect moment that would truly “capture the spirit of the day” in cinematic fashion. Every other week or so, I’d take 10–20 minutes to sort through the timestamped footage and place the seconds in order in Adobe Premiere. Not only did I live out these events firsthand, but I found myself rewatching key moments of each day multiple times each time I went into editing. I was inadvertently familiarizing and studying the timeline of each day. Each finalized, selected second chosen for the video became a trigger for my recall — I knew what events led up to that moment, what happened after, who was there, why we were there, and every detail in between. I could remember the events that took place five Tuesdays ago just as clearly as I could those of yesterday. I could feel my brain approaching 100%.
It’s impossible to capture “that perfect moment” each day. Embrace the imperfection.
Like I mentioned, I was always filming extra in case something happened — I amassed 83.6 gigs(!) of 1080p footage over the course of the year. Apologies in advance for the extreme cliché that’s about to follow, but that perfect moment really was like a snowflake: each one unique, impossible to replicable; by the time I realized that moment was unfolding in front of me, it was already gone. And often inserting myself into that very moment to capture it (touching the snowflake, if you will), would melt it away. The moment had passed. Or, it’s just not the same when, “hey, are you filming?” outright ruins the moment. The final video is essentially a collection of second-bests, at best. But as a whole, it is what it is, and that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. I like to think that it’s kind of an accurate representation of how life plays out most of the time: you have an idea of how something will be in your head — and when it comes time, it is rarely that.
We have countless routines beyond our control. But it just takes a tiny deviation from the norm to make the day memorable.
If you asked me before this project, I would have probably said something dumb like I was a person with fewer than average routines: my job is unpredictable, I travel often, I never seem to make plans — things just happen. Well, that’s sorta bullshit. I don’t care who you are or what you do, every person has a myriad of routine happenings they are subjected to day-in and day-out. But what amazed me was how willingly we all go through with the same work-home-sleep song and dance each day, and how easy it was to go a little out of my way to see that new free gallery exhibition, or actually follow-up on that new lunch-spot I had been meaning to try. Doing something a little different on my commute home or elsewhere made me feel disproportionally more accomplished than I arguably should have felt at the end of the day. Lesson: explore a bit more, even a little. You’ll have more life to remember.
One omni-observation to wrap this up. Life is chock-full of sensory events we are experiencing at the speed of light and we’ll never be able to replicate any of these things ever again — so enjoy them. The little things, man. I’m on the same route home, the same who/what/where/when/why as any other day, and yet, these sensory experiences all around me are entirely unique. That is, if you look close enough. All the temporal landmarks and deserts in between that aren’t easily captured — there’s something to the greater journey to be appreciated if you look closely enough. And that’s life in a nutshell, I suppose. No re-dos, just replays.
