I’m still relatively young (43), but already I’m noticing I’m forgetting shit all the time. Even very common things I use constantly, like, for example certain keyboard shortcuts in Emacs, that I have to type hundreds of times a day, and bash aliases I’ve been using for years, etcx. Lately I’ve just been locking up on them; can’t remember them. Other, non-computer stuff too. I find I go through my daily routine with much less memory of what I actually just did, then II think I used to have, or at least vaguely remember being used to having.
Yesterday I met a Linux-using colleague who is visiting the Bay Area (research at UCB) from Graz, Austria. I sat down to walk him through some of my code for my live music setup (I wrote it 2 years ago and modified it a few months ago), and found that I couldn’t explain to him how any of it worked! In fact, I was sketchy on how my whole system worked, and I was the one who put it together!
It’s not just computer stuff. Words and names too, names of songs, names of musicians and bands. I just lock up on ‘em, can’t remember them, can’t even remember how to remember them. Let’s not even talk about function and library calls… I don’t do much programming anymore and that stuff’s already gone.
Without Google and Wikipedia around, I’m not sure if I’d be useful for anything at this point. Luckily, I still remember how to use those. I hope.
