Fear of Forgetting

I have this fear of forgetting things. Forgetting memories and events, more specifically. Almost as if they would not exist anymore if I could not remember them.

This fear has grown lately as I move farther and farther away from childhood. I use to remember EVERYTHING. With ridiculous detail. My sisters and I were so baffled and horrified that our mom couldn't remember what roller skating rink we went to for my 8th birthday or the name of my best friend's sister. She said she had enough information to keep in her head that she just had to let go of those details. I thought that was silly.

Fast forward to now...I can't even remember my workouts from 3 days ago if I don't write them down. All of the sudden, when I became a "real adult" and had 20 little students to worry with and plan for and organize, irrelevant information fell by the wayside. Now, my sisters look to me with horror when I have completely forgotten about a trip we took or a conversation we had months ago.

I don't think it's necessarily that I'm busier or have more going on. (In high school, I kept up with classes, sport practices, lessons, my sisters' schedules, etc. One semester in college, I had to get a form reluctantly signed by the dean of my department allowing me to take 23 hours of class instead of the normal maximum 18.) I think it's either because of the weight of responsibility that comes with a classroom of elementary children that rely on you for their every need for 8 hours each day or something to do with brain science and the difference between a child's and adult's memory.

Anyway, all of this is to explain why I'm so driven to put things on paper. I kept a diary all throughout my childhood, but my writing was not very consistent. Sometimes there were would be weeks or months between entries and during middle school I had almost daily detailed reports on the vastly interesting (okay, in retrospect, not quite so much) aspects of life as a pre-teen.

I greatly regret I did not keep a diary during my first year of teaching (or any of the past few years, for that matter.) I had a roller coaster of an experience and it's too easy to just brush that off as the past and forget what it was really like. (I had so many funny teacher stories from that year, too! Sometimes, one of my sisters or friends will ask me about a story about one of those students and I will have completely forgotten until they remind me what happened.)

Obviously, this blog, in a way, is a diary, at least of my running life. So I'm trying to keep things organized so I can look back on my fails and triumphs (and sometimes read between the lines to my life outside of running, too.) I put all my results I could dig up into one post that I can link one the side and add to as needed, and I'm going back through and properly labeling my posts. At least as properly as I can with labels such as "patheticness," "lame excuses" and "interesting runs." Anyway, I'll try not to make things too complicated!

I hope y'all are enjoying this lovely weather. I'm out the door for a quick run before our tax appointment!