#creativity #woodworking #memoryloss

Within the past few months I’ve noticed something that was surprising at first, potentially a little weird and unexplainable, with consequences both welcome and sometimes unwanted depending on the circumstances.

I am remembering more and more from my past in a surprising amount of detail.

Memories get triggered based on other happenings around me or conversations had with a family member. A key word or a mention of a location often relate back to something I had experienced as a kid or a young adult. Memories of images and sounds come rushing back in an amazing amount of detail right down to the color of the car I was in or the pattern and style of clothes people were wearing around me. Things I had forgotten or simply pushed away to be stored in a trash bin in the back of my brain are recalled with vivid color and force as if those experiences had just happened the day before.

Sometimes it would be a happy memory of something I had experienced with my dad or my cousins or one of my classmates from grade school. Other times a memory will be triggered about something not so happy, but it hits me with the same amount of clarity and effect.

Interestingly though, they don’t consume me or the situation that I’m experiencing at that moment in time. They act as a reference card if you will, sitting just on the edge of my brain, informing whatever is happening to me then and there.

But why is this happening now? I have one theory, and then found something out in the science world that helps support another possible explanation.

THEORY ONE: More capacity in memory.

I’m not talking about computer stuff here but I mean it as sort of a parallel comparison. Up to a couple years before retirement, my job (most times) had me running pretty hard with new information being dumped into my lap daily that was important for doing my job correctly. Information and technology are always changing so it was difficult to retain everything much less how each change might correlate or negatively impact something else. I had to get good at filing those things away (technically) so they could be queried later because my brain just couldn’t hold that vast amount of detail.

I’ve been told that it isn’t a measure of intelligence. Thank God. Some people have the ability to store huge amount of detail in their brains and remember it all with immediate recall. I can’t. My brain seemed to hold the import stuff for work so I could do the job and bring home a paycheck, but then I would quite frequently forget a person’s name I had met the day before or forget my ATM pin even though I had chosen something simple. The details of my life going back years earlier would fade. My wife would talk to me about how the kids reacted on our first trip to Disney World, and I was lost for any of those memories from that trip 25 years earlier.

For a short time I worried that I was experiencing the early signs of Alzheimer’s Disease, but things got unexplainable better several months ago.

I retired towards the end of last year and the need for me to remember work related stuff was unceremoniously discontinued. By that I mean, I was asked to retire. Let’s just leave it at that. Shortly after that however, I found myself forgetting some of the details around my job and even some of the names of people I had a casual working relationship with. I don’t mean that I had found away to flush all that detail out of my head, just that it was no longer important for me to remember many of those things. And that is when some of the strange, lost, detailed memories of things long forgotten started to trickle back into focus. I just think my brain can only hold so much RAM (in computer terms), and retirement was a reboot allowing room for other data to load back in.

THEORY TWO: Creativity in the Wood Shop Opens Up My Brain

I wondered if my new found time in wood shop and a daily focus on creativity might be one reason for the memories being easier to recall. It doesn’t seem like a direct correlation of those two dynamics. Creativity isn’t connected to memory in the same way that remembering many, many details about work requires memory. Then I read a couple articles about the connection of creativity to memory retention. Here’s one headline:

“According to studies conducted at the University of Texas’ School of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, engaging in creative activities can improve the strength of neural pathways to the hippocampus which in turn creates strong pathways to memories.”

The last six months or so, I have really had a blast coming up with new designs and looking for new ways to get past a particular issue to whatever build I’m working on at the time. I love the challenge and using my brain to think up new ways to overcome those challenges. The marble machine I finished a few months ago was quite the hurdle, needing really specific fixes to many problems that prevented the parts of the machine from working together.

Then on a small road trip to Frankenmuth close to the 4^th of July, my wife started talking about one of our kids reaction to certain events like night time fireworks at Disney. I said, “yeah, even though we took them back to the hotel for a nap that day, they still fell asleep. I thought the main street light parade was pretty cool though.”

Where did that come from? I hadn’t remembered that in years.

Without knowing the real reason or combination of reasons responsible for my long past memories coming back to inform me, make me laugh or haunt me, they are all welcome. Maybe my brain has room again for those things to come back into focus. Maybe the increase in creative activity helps to connect again to those memories. I like that possibility the most.

So I encourage you all to stay creative. Aside from making you feel good and providing an avenue to envision and create something new, it also might help with memory retention too. Cool side benefit.

Finally, as I look out the window at a patch of bright orange tiger lilies near the garage I zoomed back to 5^th grade and a memory of me standing on a street corner. I was thrilled to be wearing the reflective orange belt and sash of a safety boy whose job was to hold kids back on a corner near school until it was safe to cross the street. That Fall afternoon at the end of lunch when no kids were left on my corner, I remember catching a couple leaves in the air as they fell from a Maple tree. Apparently Sister Geralda, the chief Nazi nun in the school had seen me do this from the second story school window and had me removed from the “Safety Patrol” that same day. I argued that there were no kids nearby so I wasn’t neglecting my duties, but you know, nuns rule. I cried. She snarled. It was a long walk home that day.

Memories are like that. Sometimes a color sparks an image and story that wasn’t so great. Other times a discussion about fireworks takes you back to a wonderful memory with your kids from a quarter century ago.

I guess I’ll stay creative and look forward to more great memories from days long gone.