A few days ago, I was looking through my iPhoneās images for a specific convo. Seeing a video whose thumbnail looked like the iMessages screen, I clicked on it, and started remembering what I hadnāt in over 3 years.
Iāve only had one best friend in life, the person who I shared the special story I wrote that was kind of a symbolic diary (sorry no explanation lol), she was a low self-monitoring introvert, but even so, itās also because sheās the person I helped the most when she would have anxiety attacks that kept her quiet and somehow talking with me would bring her out of it- even though after the fact she may have talked a lilā too much š
While it ended around 2023-2024ā¦ because I didnāt say, āgreat job for piercing your ears!ā Or something like that which she may have wanted (even though I donāt have mine pierced), going through the convos made me realize how little I remembered about our time after the fact. Sure, some things had stood out to me that I remembered nearly exactly of (Note to myself: TURKENDUDDLE (this isnāt a word)), yet a lot gave me a new perspective on who both of us were at the time.
Times come and go
Yet, what remains the same is who are were and now what weāve become. The human mind has a tendency to forget experiences, whether good or bad, and forge new associations to those times (again, whether for good or bad). This causes veterans to remember only the good times while the bad gets pushed out of mind. Vice versa can happen too, they become so focused on the bad- that any good done is forgotten. This all depends on our mindset, our focus on what we want to remember. After all, memories are there to learn from.
""item memory,ā the ability to recall individual events or impressions, is actually quite stable in older adults, she says. What tends to fall off is āassociation memory,ā the ability to link those impressions. You might remember a name or recognize a face, in other words, but putting the two together becomes a challenge.ā - PSU
Another thing Iāve done before, is make up memories:
āFalse memory is remembering things that never happened. You could swear you took the dog out last night, or swallowed this morningās pill, but you didnāt.ā - PSU
Except that, often times for me itās if I daydream of something that could actually have happened and it becomes my new memory. Fortunately Iām pretty good at telling this apart, and if itās about a real memory I kind of āoverwriteā it with the daydream. Though Iāll never remember it the same without actual proof.
How Digital Gardens bridge the gap
āItās not enough to do things for oneself only, the greatest joys in life comes from sharing with others.ā - OJ (because I couldnāt find where someone said that)
As I noted in Update 4-13-26, the things Iāve been tying together in Loomlett are the things I was wanting to do in my personal vault. Yet, knowing that somewhere among the search engines that my keywords will pop up on someoneās search (like I felt when writing Medium articles), is rewarding.
This is why I liked the idea of Archaic (link on home page), being able to save what was human about the internet while we can. Thereās a lot to learn about human nature from how people interact, form relationships, and [input here] online. However, a digital garden is a more intelligent way to do it, because it works with the way the brain links ideas between neurons rather than being a scroll-up-down social media.
For anything I write on this day, I can look back at it 5 years later thinking, āDidnāt April something of 2026 I started Quartz?ā Then I can see that it was in fact April 8th I did. If I change in thinking without realizing it, I can examine my past thoughts to see if I changed for better or for worse. Also, I can learn how my thinking has been stable, like my love for DJ Pygme & Vexentoās music (šµ Music). While I might not be able to keep up a digital garden indefinitely, writing about things helps me put what I need to learn and grow on into my long-term memory.
Takeaway
If youāve made leaps and bounds in growth over time, why not make note of any future growth youāll have? When looking back, youāll see not just what your mind remembers- but what actually happened.