Extreme but extremely faulty memory

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I have an excellent longterm memory, which has been commented on by people I know for years and years.

My short term memory feels shot at the best of times. My short term memory makes me feel dysfunctional.

As with many others, my memory for things I'm interested in far outweighs my memory for things like multiplication tables (zero interest).

My mom when alive, actually, my dad too ...used to say "You can't spend your life living in the past"... They obviously had no clue how vibrant my past seems compared to my present. I tend to remember details, but not the kind of details that are useful to me (ie things I need to recall for a job advancement etc) This kind of memory drives me buggy. In one sense, I feel so smart, or on cue, when I can recall what t-shirt a certain person was wearing on a certain day from 10 years ago... but also so dumbfounded, when I realise how utterly useless the information is... especially when I cannot for the life of me imprint the information that would contribute to my success.

My short term memory, especially with regards to conversations, is terrible. It's nearly debillitating (sp) in high sensory environments.

Wow... another thread here at WrongPlant which describes me spot on.

I play traditional Irish music. Tunes aren't taught; they are shared aurally. I can learn tunes with uncanny speed and remember every one of them. I can listen to albums without trying to learn tunes, and then one day realize I've learned all of them on that album. This ability isn't that uncommon among the folks I play with, but I think it has always come more naturally for me than for others.

I'm also really good with remembering phone numbers, addresses, and maps (especially maps of areas which are laid out on a grid with a formal "system" to them).

I will almost immediately forget a new person's name, however. And, while I can remember dates, I'm really bad at correlating birthdays to them... specifically, realizing that person X's birthday is coming up.

I have vivid memories of scenes from my childhood, I can describe what I was feeling, where I was, what I was doing, what the place looked like and even details on walls/ceilings of places and also any random trivia connected to my passion of films and the people involved.
I am usually quite good at recognizing faces (but it sometimes gets tricky with placing names, unless its someone I have known for a long time, or an actor/actress) and can remember the birthdays of almost everyone whos ever told me - including a girl who told me 8 years ago and I haven't spoken to since. I can remember much of our conversation from when I was 10.
But I can't remember what happened last week, over the weekend and in some cases an hour or less ago!

I can definitely relate. In some respects, my memory is superb, and other people are astonished that I can/do remember the things I do. I also remember things such as conversations I had when I was five years old, objects that were in the house, books I read and jingles I heard at the same age. In others, it is frighteningly bad. If someone asks me to do something, I must immediately write it down, or I'll have forgotten it within minutes, literally minutes. I am very poor in general at remembering faces; I often have to 'meet' someone half a dozen times before I'll start to recognize them on sight.

I have come to the conclusion, though, that my memory is very much tied to what I do and don't find personally interesting. This tendency that probably exists to a certain degree in most people is extreme in me. No matter how much I know that I ought to remember something, if the personal desire for it is not there... I won't. I believe that most people have an ability to remember faces because of their natural desire to socialize, to be interested in other people, to want to remember; this is absent in me, and therefore I don't. I just haven't been able to take an interest at a deep enough level for the details to really register with me, and so, when I leave the person, they're quickly forgotten. I frequently can't clearly picture the face of someone I was speaking to yesterday. I DO, however, have an extremely good memory - better than most - and ability to picture in my mind as clearly as if they were before me, the faces of people on TV. Because the interest is there.

My memory is shot, both long and short term. I believe this has to do with the many psychotropic meds I took while pursing other diagnoses. I have trouble distinguishing whether a "memory" I have is something that I actually experienced or something I thought about doing and didn't or something I dreamt. From time to time, I find myself corrected by people around me on some "fact" that I based an argument on that turned out to be imaginary.

I can, however, remember numbers - phone numbers, SS numbers, bank account numbers and, particularly, dates. I'm pretty good at math, but I can't do 2134 X 567 in my head. And I find it hard to count toothpicks at a glance -- beyond seven of them.

dp

sort of similar to dupertuis,
though always been that way and certainly no meds involved

i intended just a short post to get this up the ladder,
as i believe 'memory' to be my main practical problem in life - always have, in a way

so, short post first:

i never forget a face
i never forget a name
i NEVER get the two together

exaggeration?poeticlicense/toxically@R'0.iii

and then the ADDIT:

i have always noticed in my social behaviour... certain 'flaws'
it seemed to me rather self-centered (in the negative way as it would 'normally' be judged without the awareness of autism involved) - thus sort of 'blamed' myself for my apparent emotional... non-connectedness, lack of engagement, lack of 'real' (emotionally driven) interest in anyone's particularities - indeed the 'gossip' content of what in the end constitutes real life

mind you!, i have NEVER been inclined to alter in any way anything about me, i never intended to 'adapt', i was just interested very self-centeredly in myself - i just took notice of such responses; sort of clinically, in self-observance

[intermezzo: self-observance]
- maybe that came about by simply, at six year old, not having any parents in practical sense, upon the divorce by which my mother left my father in africa and returned to the necessity (?) of a european, but decided to not return to surrounding of her family - the situation left her working all the time, and sleeping after dinner
- 'structural emotional neglect' has been proposed for my 'symptoms', yup, suppose so...
but meanwhile, left to my own devices and 'lack of imagination' ... and there was no 'real' need for addressing obvious problems (which i might not have identified) because 'i did well enough at school' - which by the way was a school in another town than we lived and where my little brother went to school
- i have always felt 'exposed' and NEVER had anyone to turn to - so i guess that is part of how i have come to always play a part in the film i am aware of is my living: who else has there ever been to look out for me?

all in all, i have never sought to adapt, but there is something 'unreal' 'alienated-from-self' in my personal experience; but these things provide perfect sense for causation without ever thinking of autism

this expressed itself also very much in the 'out of sight, out of mind' phenomenon that is my awareness - perfectly understandable that, if so 'alertly' motivated, i forget anything that is not actually there in reality: what is not there is something for me to not have to deal=cope with... so... forget it, mate
autism however provides another possibility, and of course the two are not mutually exclusive

the more important my search for AUTHENTIC MEMORIES

i lack almost any 'skill' of 'power' of VISUALIZATION
ooooooooooh: i SEE everything (do i care to notice?, will i remember?)
but if it's not there, i cannot visually recall

so all that african youth, most of my primary education years, and secundary education, and later, and on... it just disappears into that forgetting machine that i have called me mind ...
and i remain with empty knowledge of the biographical facts of my life... and now internal emotional compass to re-cognize, re-member, re-live

and still there may be co-morbid blockage;
for it is known by any other than me that i knew all the fishes by their latin names (in Liberia, which implies i knew them in dutch and english as well) and now wouldn't recognize a red herring if it walked up to me and kicked me up that pASsage
there are many more instances i do not remember 'alively' but that are part of the folklore of my early youth in africa; my language acquisition (dutch>french&lingala(age1-3); american; latin);
primary school i would absolutely have been the little professor on subjects of nature and astronomy (i was) but for sort of pseudo-unconsciously hiding in the mediocrity of the crowd - i was a late arrival in my first class - no choice in seat; luckily: i soon discovered the extreme benefits of not being in the two front rows: that were the nerds

none of it remembered

i could and can sit and stare at homework for hours, and know i am not picking it up -
but somehow, it is there, i cannot re-produce the answer, but i always recognize it: i am the god of multiple choice; when reading a novel, i will notice the typo, will remember where on the page that passage was i want to find again (and will find it), will remember the totality of that text in itself and for the duration... and may years later have forgotten i read it at all, but then... rereading...
however, the moment i have physically copied a passage (writing, i'm not so sure about typing),
i know i will remember... somehow

and so you see: memory - it's all there somehow AND it's not AND it's stopping me every second from producing a decent post on topic

soo much fragmentation, mosaic, horizontal association, never vertical, but always: fragmentation; not even relativity, not even quantum-THEORY;
it's all quantum-PRACTICE in the regions of the dole drums, Greater Bermudan Area

dang....