I often can’t remember what I did the previous week / weekend before that. I’m 36, and this is how I’ve been for as long as I can remember (our high school had alternating daily class schedules, and I very often forgot if the day before was an A schedule or B schedule, as I could recall some random moments in class from the past handful of days but I couldn’t tell if one recollection was of yesterday or the day before, or the day before that — it’s all a jumble).

To expand on that: questions about travel are my Achilles heel when it comes to dating. “So, where have you been, and what did you do while there?” Well, I took a trip to Iceland with my ex-girlfriend, and I’ve been all over the place with my family, but… I don’t remember the names of the places, and I don’t remember all that much of historical sites and such. Probably doesn’t help that I’m not all that engaged with the names of places / things to start with (vs simply experiencing the thing itself), so that’s in one ear and out the other. What I do recall is conversation and feelings of connectedness, and a couple snapshots of particularly picturesque scenery. But which cities? Which museums/sites/regions? What did I do while there? No idea. I actually rehearse such scenarios before dates to avoid an awkward first impression.

I’m great at remembering how things are connected, why something is the way it is, and how things work. But I couldn’t remember individual facts (names, numbers, the chronological order of independent experiences, etc) to save my life. But most of life is made up of individual, isolated details — which then means that most of life isn’t very memorable for me.