the annual misremembering

I always have the same thought at the start of July - what am I going to post on July 12? The date is the anniversary of my mom's passing, and since I have this notion that TOA has commemorated the occasion each year I usually feel some kind of obligation to maintain the tradition. Of course, planning to write something doesn't help me come up with anything, so the next step is to kill time, which I accomplish by following a strict process - I dip back into the TOA archives, seek out the July 12 posts for inspiration, and then... I remember that my memory is, let's say, true on average (!). The reality is that if I score my July 12 work based on its memorial qualities, I'd have to say I return mixed results - 2016 and 2020 were direct hits, 2018 and 2019 were close yet too self-centered to serve as memorials, and 2017 evaded the moment (but partial credit for a structural tribute to the 2016 post). And what about 2021? Last year, I didn't post anything at all.

Based on feedback over the years from you, loyal reader, I suspect I'm not alone in this misremembering - the consensus in the TOA audience is that July 12 is reserved for just the one topic. The fact that we could all be wrong in this way demonstrates something I've learned about memory. The way I understand it, the brain's recall process subtly changes the memory each time we retrieve it, with some suggesting that over time we start remembering the memory rather than the original. The rough analogy coming to mind is a writer's revision - the published copy has the DNA of the first draft, but each edit moved the work incrementally until the final elements bear little resemblance to their initial counterparts. This wouldn't be an issue if we collectively dismissed the value of memory, but sadly it seems that a defining characteristic of the human existence is a reverence for the past. I feel this perspective suggests a preference for certainty, and perhaps also enables us to put off the necessity of facing the future, about which the only certainty is uncertainty. It also makes it harder to accept the premise that what we remember, what we remember without question, is more likely than not to be at least partially inaccurate. At the very least, it may be wise to think less of the past given that we may not know as much about it as we like to think.

And yet, there are good arguments for respecting the past, including its educational value - they say those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. This raises an urgent question - how can we learn anything from memory if it shifts everything around like high tide renovating a sand castle? One answer, I suppose, is to strengthen and support our memory, with primary sources being a reliable option. If your goal is to know what happened, then the best way is to find something that describes what happened as it happened. The July 12 TOA timestamps are a decent example in my context, but I actually think my running mileage log is an even better case study. Over the past few years I've treated July 12 as one of the Major Events in my running season, building up my mileage throughout the spring in order to enjoy a lively eight or ten mile session on the day. It's always served as a personal memorial of sorts because I used talk with my mom about running in a way that I haven't done with anyone else. The main obstacle with talking to others was about the primary reason they ran - for health and exercise, for a challenge, for a way to enjoy the outdoors, for vanity about appearance, for their identity, for a way to kill boredom, for whatever reason but mine, which mattered because I could never connect with people whose motivations were so incompatible with my own. What I used to find talking to my mom was how we both simply enjoyed running, would run all day if practical, so losing the only person I could honestly connect with about running became the most important of the least important July 12 losses.

So at this point I would reiterate that one priceless feature of the annual July 12 run was to honor and acknowledge this loss, but here again enters fact-checker, the memorial wrecker. When I referred back to my running log to see how much mileage I'd accumulated over these recent July 12's, I was in for a familiar story - in three of the past six years, I didn't run on July 12 at all. Some memorial! This is actually even worse than my performance with July 12 posts - at least I posted something, even if it wasn't strictly related to the day. In the running example it's much worse because I've made a story out of ninety minutes during which I actually did nothing, and the deception went so far that I even fooled myself. I suppose that the great memorial in my mind was, once again, misremembered.

Here we return to the same question about memory, and the instinct is to once more blame the limitations of the human brain, or perhaps I should say its gullibility, at least in terms of accepting whatever new detail the recalled memory invents to tweak the past. It's as if the memory, free to run all day, has demonstrated the problem with such a mentality - nothing outruns time. Just as time will eventually catch up to a runner, so too it will someday overtake the memory. The problem, of course, is the inevitability of it, the threat is relentless, the passage of time nonnegotiable, each unstoppable second bumping into one of the many precious details that balance above the abyss in the infinite mind.

******

The most embarrassing thing about these July 12 memory failures is that I knew at some level that this might happen way back on that first July 12. Or at least, I suspect so, as this would explain why I suddenly and briefly kept a journal during that time. The journal has the facts and figures, trivia really, from those few weeks that might otherwise disappear in some cobwebbed corner of my head. The journal can tell you the rough outline of what happened, and when, and who was involved; it can tell you how I felt about it all. Sometimes I flip through it, experiencing various emotions old and new as time stretches and collapses through my fingers, always marveling at some new discovery or forgotten detail. Every time, I close the notebook and resolve to get back in the journaling habit so that I can someday have the same experience looking back on this time, these days, to gift the present to my future. Of course, this resolve lasts just long enough to put up a losing battle against the next idea - a walk, a nap, a drink with friends - and I soon forget what made journaling such a nice idea. This isn't to say I reject the notion entirely, evidenced by the journal-type substances that have sporadically graced TOA, but it's clear to me by now that I won't do it in my daily life.

I'm not sure exactly why I won't journal again, especially considering my positive reaction to the previous effort as well as the accumulating evidence that I am prone to forgetting certain details. I suppose the best I can do is offer a theory, and it runs somewhat against the point made so far - the problem with the way our brains store memories may not be a problem at all, it may be that the problem is the way we value factual accuracy. To put it another way, maybe we just forget things and that's fine; I don't need to remember everything I've forgotten. This isn't to dismiss the importance of accuracy. There are undoubtedly situations where having the facts 100% correct is the most important consideration, and of course in most other situations it seems reckless or just silly to suggest that the facts aren't so important. But the default perception seems to be that a great memory is defined by its ability to recall correct information - who says that's right?

I think the truth is that sometimes having the facts doesn't help us remember. I'm talking about the times when memory isn't so much about the past but rather the future, which can happen in situations where memory locks us into a pattern that makes it difficult to move forward. What does it matter in the end if I missed a few years of posting or running on July 12? The reality is that working out the way I feel in writing was endlessly valuable over these past few days, so whether it has a place in a long annual tradition or not is quite frankly of little relevance to me; what matters now is what I do next. And to be honest, can I really say for sure that I remember connecting with my mom about running? July 12 was seven years ago, and most of these conversations would have happened even further in the past. I'm open to the idea that I have once again misremembered, though I might actually be completely off the mark - my mom ran marathons, which is about as goal-driven as it gets for runners, so maybe those shared motivations are just another paragraph I've rewritten in the prequel to my next run. But I do know from experience, even if just three times in the past six years, that having a good run on this day is a priceless gift.

Or maybe, I should say that I know these things - the value of writing, the reward of a run - from memory. The fact that I remember doing these things, even inconsistently, on certain July 12's feels like a signal that there is something else about memory. I am beginning to sense that the value of memory is not just the recall of precious facts or its ability to rewrite the stories we tell ourselves in order to move on, but the ability to remember the things we can't forget. Tools like the journal may imply a desire to support the memory as it leaks facts, but what it actually does is more in line with this idea - the journal reminds me that I once survived a difficult time through writing, and I can't forget this.

With running, my memory doesn't even need a prompt like the journal. When I reflect on why running has its place today, I recall a conversation in that final week when I asked my mom what she dreamed about, and she said running. I think we'll forget almost everything if it means retaining the few things we can't forget, these moments resurfacing in the redundant sea of memory to remind me of what I already knew - that every road ahead is uncertainty, that no one ever gives up on a dream, and that small traditions are there when we need them, to lend us the resolve we need for moving forward, on those days when we can't quite do it on our own.

who woke the business bro?

Sometimes I find myself in these conversations at work with a person I don't know very well who is explaining to me that, you know, George Floyd was murdered in 2020, it was an awakening, and they've been thinking about a lot of things. My response is always the same, and it's genuine - that's great, we should always be learning, progress is a team sport, and so on. Finding more people who are committed to these ideas is a rewarding part of the job, each one swelling our ranks one at a time, so despite the major setbacks represented by certain current events I remain convinced that we will win - we the people who see each other equally, who reject the bullshit that enables or excuses bigotry, who see the future as a place we will all share together. We will win.

There is something else I think about in these moments, however, and given that it's not an immediately helpful thought I mostly keep it to myself. If someone highlights 2020 as a turning point, then it means I have around a thirty year head start in terms of at least having some related topics in mind. Such a detail has no real meaning, of course, reflecting merely that I'm a two-time minority in his mid-thirties, but in a workplace context I suspect it means I have the equivalent of a few additional years of experience ahead of the class of 2020. For those who've endured far more serious forms of discrimination than me, the perspective they bring to the workplace is even greater than mine.

It might be necessary for me to work out a way to express this observation in a productive way. It always sounds good on paper to talk of "meeting people where they are", but what do you do when the variation within a workplace is as wide as the gap in math skills between a third-grader and a college graduate? I don't have the answer, but it surely isn't a few optional training sessions per year. I guess this is the age-old problem we are trying to solve - if you aren't among that privileged majority, then you either have to be twice as good at your job just to keep up with your peers or you can recite the company script while the advantage of your experience is eroded down to the corporate average.

leftovers - it's just not the time to not say (the final schedule)

I didn't reference the idea of "writing as thinking" in this post, but perhaps I should have. It's undoubtedly important to have something to say strictly in the context of responding to or analyzing a particular situation, but the extra element that separates writing in the TOA sense from writing in the journalistic sense is my willingness to work out what I think through the process of writing. One problem with examining the question solely through the lens of having something to say is how such an approach dismisses the possibility of discovering something to say - in many cases, the link between writing and thinking emerges after the pen hits the paper. If I rule out working on a certain subset of topics, what it means is that I am ruling out access to the thinking that is enabled by writing about those topics.

The flip side is that perhaps the recent trend reflects a change in what I'm willing to think about, whether in writing or not. The common problem in the early days of TOA was "which of these things should I write about?" but these days this consideration has given way to "what is there to write about?". Initially this change was somewhat alarming but I'm starting to realize that perhaps this merely reflects my state of mind in 2016 - back then, there was so much I simply had never thought deeply about, so diving in via writing was an enticing option. Now that we are well into year six (!) of TOA, I'm finding myself encountering two constraints with increasing regularity - first, that I have fewer obvious topics remaining to think about; second, that each remaining topic demands a far higher level of thinking relative to the 2016 standard. These considerations both lead to the same effect on the time commitment - I first need more time to select a topic, and then I need more time to write about it.

But I suppose in another way this doesn't really change anything. It's always been true that when it comes to this form of writing, the time to start is when I'm ready to think, and when I have nothing left to think about then it's time to stop. It's unavoidable that the process is going to look different from time to time, especially in terms of both the frequency and construction of the posts, but if I resist the temptation to overanalyze the main concept is the same as always. What that means for now is a change to the pattern or expectation for TOA, but that should be OK - it's why we have email notifications for new posts. There are some current features that I might retain in some capacity - for example, I'll likely continue holding the longer posts for Sundays - but I think for the most part things will go up on TOA when they are ready to go up. Ultimately, this feels like the reason why I said the worst thing for a blog is a schedule - when you put a frame around something, it quickly goes from supportive to restrictive, and when the goal is better thinking there is nothing as detrimental as a restriction.

it's just not the time to not say

It might seem like the point of slowing down is to take a moment for recharging the batteries, but it turns out that the change in pace can sometimes help restart stalled projects. This has been my experience in the TOA context, where I've used quiet periods to examine the backlog in my draft folder and find ways to move those posts closer to completion. You could also include in this category results like the esteemed "Reading Clearout" posts, which I generally finalize by determining that the fifth sentence in the draft is actually the final sentence, again a process that seems to come more naturally during a so-called break. When I started up around a year ago with the idea of organizing TOA around an informal "in-season/off-season" pattern, I think what I had in mind was a structure that would make the best of both worlds - a way to benefit from schedule-driven elements such as deadline urgency while also ensuring that I blocked some time to review anything I'd left half-finished. In hindsight I still think this was a good decision, the seasonal concept loosely mirroring one of my favorite podcasts, More or Less. This podcast has maintained its momentum for at least several years (and likely more), so in my mind it implies a format for sustainability and longevity.

Of course, TOA has some major differences from that podcast, the least of these being the fact that this isn't a job for me or anyone else (there is no "staff" at TOA), but perhaps more importantly that I don't have a large audience imposing certain expectations on my output. To put it another way, this only happens if I do it, and I don't have to do it. This line of thinking became an unanticipated feature of the slow periods within the seasonal structure, when I had so much downtime that I found myself wondering at certain odd moments whether it would make sense to shutdown TOA. Despite being unanticipated, I could hardly describe it as a surprise - I know all things end, even great things, and I've known this all along; I like to think I've tried my best to make TOA exceptional, but exceptional doesn't make it an exception.

The memory of these deliberations simmered under the surface of last week's post, which considered the endings of various favorite podcasts from over the years. I suspect the hosts of those shows went through something similar to what I just described before their respective decisions to end their shows. The post meandered to something resembling an original thought, or at least an original question - why stop the show when you could just reformat it? I suppose there is no way for me to know for certain, but I suspect I have a decent guess - they didn't feel like it. I think that's what will make TOA different than those examples, at least over the next few months, because I don't have any aversion at all from doing the equivalent of reducing an hour-long show into seven minutes. I think this has always been true to an extent for despite my struggles evading the various obstacles created by my self-imposed scheduling expectations, I've had no difficulty hitting "publish" on posts short enough to fit on a CVS receipt.

I suppose in the end it all comes down to a fairly straightforward consideration - do I have anything left to say? When I took a moment last week to scribble down "commitment to the Swiss cheese model" as a reminder for a future post, it seems clear that I still have at least one reason to keep moving along with TOA. Recent readers may also recall the Proper Labmin post, which listed out a few different ideas I'm kicking around in the draft folder. It seems that while there are some things I need to say, then it remains the time to say them. And of course, there is the other side of the argument - if I stop, then maybe it becomes harder to say certain things when I need to say them, and there is nothing worse than not saying something when it's time to say it. In fact, these days it seems like few things are more important than being able to say the things that need to be said when it's time to say them. But to be honest, despite all the good reasons I guess I just don't know regarding the long-term, so I suppose it remains to be seen - whether I will continue to generate writing ideas, whether I will feel up to the effort of working those ideas into a coherent final draft, and whether I will feel its worth the risk of hitting that post button so that I can say what needs to be said; regarding all that, now is just not the time to say.