It’s been a while, and for that I must apologize.

I’m not much of a multi-tasker, or plate-spinner, if you will. I can keep one or, at best, maybe two of them spinning. Anything more, and chaos ensues.

The New Plate

Back in December I added a new plate to my collection. You can check it out here if you’d like. In short, it’s a creative design studio, where, among other things, I’ll be building new websites.

As the name (PFC Studios) suggests, I consider it at least in some way affiliated with this blog.

What does that mean exactly? I wish I could say. The two exist for the same reasons, but beyond that I really don’t yet know.

The Old Plate

The important thing I want to say at this point is that “PFC the Old Plate” has not been discarded; I just couldn’t keep it spinning, so it fell.

Honestly, I feel pretty bad about that. At the very least, I wish I’d planned it better and announced that there’d be some sort of break.

The problem is, I didn’t, and still don’t, know exactly what will come after.

It’s like I knew I had to grab the car keys and leave the house for a while, confident I’d be back, and yet, not sure where I was going. It’s no big deal to leave the house if you announce you need some groceries. Announce you’re merely leaving, however, and, at best, you risk your message being misinterpreted.

“Just leaving” means you’re trying to get away from something.

But I’m not trying to get away from something; I’m trying to move toward something. I just couldn’t find a way forward that allowed me to keep both plates spinning.

What’s Next

Having said all that, I still can’t quite tell you what’s next or when it’ll come.

I believe PFC and PFC Studios will one day co-exist, but for the time being my plate-spinning voodoo is mostly expended. I don’t want to make the same mistake twice, so I’m keeping focused on the “new plate” until the risk of it falling is low.

Until that time, I think I need to leave PFC alone. I care about it too much to do it half-way, or just intermittently.

So whatever comes next, and whenever it comes, just know that this isn’t the end. That sounds a lot more melodramatic than I want it, but nonetheless, I think it’s important.

Photo Credit: Kalexanderson via Compfight cc

That’s the premise of the United States Memory Championship. The Memory Championship is an annual contest where people all over the country compete with each other by memorizing and reciting different sources of information, anything from poems to random sets of numbers.

The competition is fierce, but it didn’t scare away Joshua Foer.

Foer is a science journalist and youngest of  the three Foer brothers (famous for their impact in literature). He was covering the Memory Championship as a freelance journalist when started to wonder why he shouldn’t compete, himself.

The contestants were just like him. He had a brain that could be trained in memory, just like theirs.

And thus, he was inspired to take on the task himself, the magical task of memory and ability.

The Mind Palace

But what tricks was he taught?

The most notable trick in the “Art of Memory”  is the Mind Palace. It’s a premise invented by Ancient Greeks which allow one to store and record their memories (kind of like how Sherlock Holmes does it here).

Foer explains it like this:

It involves, essentially creating an imagined building in your mind’s eye and filling that building with imagery. The weirder and more bizarre, the better. And when you walk back through that building, you can see those images that you left behind earlier.

The idea is to use a visual construct (i.e. a house) to “frame” your memories, giving you a tracing point to track the memory as you go forward.

While this concept is a bit odd, the psychological principles are sound. To learn more about it, see here.

Also, if you’d like to dig further, check out Foer’s best-selling book  Moonwalking with Einstein.

*Photo Credit: Trey Ratcliff (Creative Commons)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Christopher is a freelance writer and college student from Minnesota.  Every week, he writes at Liter8 about modern-day topics of interest, both philosophical, scientific, and relevant. He also posts on twitter as @liter8media.

I just can’t wait to be finished
with all these stupid blog posts,
the rants I read on Facebook,
and the ads that crowd my screen.

They sound so much like children
on a playground throwing tantrums
who are yelling about some nonsense
which I, for one, can’t understand.

And yet, I can’t help thinking
that this price hardly compares
to all the beauty and the freedom
beneath the surface of this day.

Because that’s what today is, really,
a day when all who’ve reached eighteen
are allowed to throw their very own tantrum,
and the world is compelled to listen.

In this we are the exception
to the rule of human history;
it’s just so deeply ingrained in us
that it’s hard not to take it for granted.

And so, though our shouts be dissonant,
and our frustrations difficult to bear,
they form a song that’s truly unique and,
if you listen close enough, really quite beautiful.

So sing it out now all the more,
oh, sing it out.

*Photo Credit: Johan (Creative Commons)

It turns out I have acid reflux, or something of that nature. All things considered, it’s nothing I can complain about.

When you go in for an endoscopy, they typically sedate you. The whole thing’s over in a matter of minutes; so I suppose it makes sense that not everyone gets knocked out.

Still, if given the option, I’d really rather not be awake when they stick a camera down my throat.

I remember lying in the chair as they got ready to start the procedure. I honestly hadn’t been worried up until that moment. What worried me wasn’t the procedure itself- that they’d find something wrong or make a mistake.

No; it was that, for just a few seconds, I was worried they weren’t actually going to put me to sleep.

*  *  *

When I was in middle school my best friend broke his leg during a basketball game. I was there. I saw the whole thing.

You might think it was the screaming that bothered me most. That, or the sight of his leg bending where it shouldn’t. And it’s true, I won’t deny, that these things were quite terrible. But I wouldn’t go so far as to call them disturbing.

Disturbing was what someone told us when we asked if he could be given some stronger pain meds, or if they could even knock him out entirely.

“No,” they said, “but it’s okay. They’ll given him something so he’ll forget about it after.” 

I can remember staying up many a night thinking about this notion. That you could experience something so terrible and yet have no memory of it after the fact.

Twilight anesthesia is the term for it, I’ve since learned. And honestly, everything about it seems perfectly logical.

If you can’t knock someone out, why not keep them from remembering it? Why would anyone want to carry those scenes, and that pain, around with them for the rest of their life?

Something about it felt off to me, as it still does today. Try as I might, though, it was hard to find a good argument against it.

*  *  *

Lying in the chair, mere seconds from the start of my endoscopy, a terrifying thought crossed my mind:

They’re not going to sedate me. It’s the same thing they gave Austin. It’s going to be terrible. And I’m just not going to remember it.

No sooner had I thought this than the anesthesiologist steps over and mentions something to the effect of “Goodnight”. That was when I felt the icy warmth of whatever it was he’d put into the IV. This is the last thing I remember.

Ashley and I learned a lot about how memory works that day.

Fifteen minutes or so later she came in to get me, and to keep me from saying anything (else?) stupid to the nurses. As she tells it, I “discovered” her sitting by the bed half a dozen times. This was one among many repeat conversations.

Looking back on the experience later, I think it finally occurred to me what had bothered me so much about the whole concept of twilight anesthesia.

*  *  *

Life is not a fairy tale.

Or at least not the kind told by Disney (although who knows, now that Disney just bought the Star Wars franchise). Bad things happen. Terrible things, too. Things we don’t want to read about, and certainly not experience.

Sometimes you have an endoscopy and they say it’s nothing, just acid reflux. Other times it’s cancer, or a “sorry, there were complications with the procedure”.

But the bad things are just as much a part of what defines us as the good things, the things we love to remember. If I told you about my life through some highlight reel of my successes, it wouldn’t just be short. It’d be inaccurate.

To tell you who I am, truly and completely, I have to tell you about the bad things. About the places I wish I’d never gone but did.

And how can I tell you about both the mountains and the valleys if I have no memory of what the valleys were like?

The answer, of course, is that I can’t. And that is why I prefer to remember.

*Photo Credit: Trey Ratcliff (Creative Commons)

We humans have amazing memories.

In fact, our memory is one of the features that heavily distinguishes us from other species. Our ability to distinguish between new and well-known concepts is equaled by no other.

But I have a quick test for you. I’d like you to scan over the following list of words, then try your best to remember them:

snooze

slumber

doze

nap

bed

rest

awake

peace

yawn

tired

 (Scroll down once you’ve read over them)

Alright, now that you’ve read that list, I have a question:

Was the word sleep in there?  (no peeking!)

If  psychologist Daniel Simons is correct, 40% of you will say yes.  But if you go and look back, the word is not there.

Shocking, no?

The Illusion Of Memory

This is an example of what Simons and his colleague Christopher Chabris  call the “Illusion of Memory” in their book The Invisible Gorilla.

They found that, when trying to remember things, people often accidentally “modify” their memories in order to match either the desires or thought categories of the day.

In the case above, you might have modified your memory in order to include the word “sleep”, since it fit into the category I was asking you about.

This seems like a really simple flub, like something that shouldn’t matter in the long-run. However, this simple modification of memory could affect everything from historical accounts to legal cases involving eyewitnesses.

How do we avoid this?

The easy answer is having ways to “Check the facts” and always double-check your memory with others.

The hard answer is making sure to understand the errors and potential problems that could come about because of this.

Do you agree?  Is our memory less trustworthy than we think? Or are we exaggerating the problems?  

Let us know below!

*Photo Credit: Lali Masriera (Creative Commons) 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Christopher is a freelance writer and college student from Minnesota.  Every week, he writes at Liter8 about modern-day topics of interest, both philosophical, scientific, and relevant. He also posts on twitter as @liter8media.

We’ve reached the start of Act III, albeit a little later than originally planned. I was in Kenya for a couple of weeks and have been slowly working my way through the inbox (among other things) since being back.

Anyways, before we get into this week’s topic (Memory), I wanted to briefly mention a few new changes in store for Act III:

-First, we’ll be welcoming a new regular contributor. His name is Christopher and he runs a cool blog which can be found here. Check back over the next couple of days for his first post.

(Also, if friendliness is your thing, feel free to leave him a comment below welcoming him to the PFC community.)

-Second, we’ll be switching from one topic per week to one topic every two weeks. The main reason is that I’d like to keep upping the quality of the posts while still being able to write a few different kinds of posts for each topic.

That was already a big enough challenge prior to last month, when I started working on the future New York Times-bestselling memoir, Killer Bumble Bees Vs. Woolly Mammoths: A First Person Account. Coming to a Borders near you in 2035.

-Lastly, well… I’m pretty sure there was something else on this list but for the time being I seem to have forgotten it.

Oh well. Back to Bees Vs. Mammoths…

*Photo Credit: Peter Kemmer (Creative Commons)

Most days, at least, I’d say the answer is no.

Who am I? I am me. And who exactly is that? When I find out, I promise you’ll be the first to know, though I suspect we’ll both be a long time waiting.

If figuring out your own identity wasn’t enough, try adding to that the identity of some ambiguous other.

Such has been my continual struggle since the inception of PFC.

Some people act like it’s easy, this figuring out who you are. At them I call down (mostly silent) profanities, though that is just my anger talking. Ultimately I feel sorry for them; for I know that it’s better to lack the answer than to have never truly asked such questions.

I started PFC, in its current form, nearly six months ago. In its original form, it began a couple years before that. Last week someone named Rocky sent me the following message on Facebook:

Soooo I’m still confused as to what this site is, lol. I get the general idea I guess, but is it a blog? Do you blog about the weekly idea? Is this like playing Clue? I’m pretty smart, just confused, lol. Please guide me so I can join the party!! Thanks.

(At the end there was a smiley face, which did not go unappreciated.)

I’ve yet to write a response, though what I want to write is, “Oh yeah? You’re confused? You’d like to join the party? Well, ME FREAKIN’ TOO!”

In all seriousness, how is it possible that a person can come up with the idea for something, devote (at present count) more than six months of their life exclusively to it, even quit a job they really liked for it… and STILL NOT BE ABLE to tell someone what it is???

This I find mind-boggling.

And now I also feel guilty, and will go try and come up with something to tell Rocky. As if that will turn out any different…

*Photo Credit: Oberazzi (Creative Commons)

4. I must be willing, when necessary, to murder my darlings.

This I first heard said roughly a year ago, by Stephen King. Later, I found the notion echoed by Annie Dillard, among others.

I’ve never experienced anything that can equal the joy of discovering an idea and then giving it arms, legs, and skin. Ashley and I haven’t yet had children; but if giving birth is anything like turning an idea into something material, I can’t wait to be a father.

I wouldn’t dare compare the abandoning of a creative work to the abandoning of a human child.

I have no doubt there’s a fundamental difference.

Still, there is a great pain which accompanies the former. For some, it’s simply too much; they go on fighting and struggling to avoid the loss of that which they simply can’t keep.

But while no parent should ever abandon their child, every writer must sometimes kill their darlings.

They are the dangerous, untame branches of an otherwise fruitful tree.

For a tree to continue producing fruit, it must occasionally be pruned.

* * *

5. The end result will rarely ever be good if I do something for no reason but that someone told me I’m supposed to.

This one’s particularly tricky. To determine if it’s applicable takes discernment and, most of all, time.

When you begin something new, it would be foolish not to seek out advice from the journeys of others. Some of the advice will make sense while some of it will not.

At this point, the part you don’t understand is the part most likely to be true. The deepest truths cannot be conveyed by mere words or demonstrations; they can only be experienced.

Thus, we must look to others who have gone before us, who have learned through experience that which we don’t yet know.

Eventually, though, our journeys will contain experiences of our own. And that is when we must decide:

Will we continue following the directions of others? Or will we find a path of our own?

* * *

6. The human voice, whether spoken, written, or conveyed through telepathy, is capable of producing two, and only two, kinds of sound. It can make noise or it can make music. The world needs less of the former and more of the latter.

As research for our third week’s topic, Ashley and I watched the movie August Rush. By the way, have I ever mentioned that I love my job?

The following day, I was thinking about a quote from the movie and turned it into a post.

The quote is this:

Listen. Can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind, in the air, in the light. It’s all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do… is listen.

At first I considered the quote to be poetic; like a pretty rhyme, it was easy on the ears.

But soon I began to wonder if there was something more to it, if perhaps the characters, or the actors, or the writer(s) of the script actually meant it.

Now, several months later, I’ve come to believe it.

Music is a fundamental element of nature, in a sense no different than carbon, palladium, or hassium. And it isn’t always played by instruments or sung by choirs.

It’s in each of us, if we would have it; in every choice we make it can be found.

Most of the options before us will merely result in more noise.

But there’s always one…

* * *

Now that I’m done, I realize that I’ve lied. The truth is that there are seven lessons which I have learned, the last of which is this:

7. Never let go of hope.

*Photo Credit: Nosha (Creative Commons)

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that time is mostly arbitrary. Nonetheless, there is value in marking off the milestones.

Here are six things I’ve learned so far…

* * *

1. It is better to do one really great thing than to do five pretty good things.

If I want to write an essay, paint a picture, or compose a song just so that I can say I’ve done so, that is fine.

If, however, I wish to write an essay, paint a picture, or compose a song so that my essay, picture, or song will make a real and lasting impact upon the world, that is another thing entirely.

The world has no shortage of essays, pictures, and songs. Some are good while others are less so.

But how often do we encounter one that is truly great? How often do we come across one that remains with us, inspires us, perhaps even haunts us long into the future?

To bring such things into existence is a worthwhile endeavor; but it takes commitment, dedication, and no less than the whole of our attention.

* * *

2. I can only be myself.

When I talk in person or on the phone, I don’t speak in exclamation points.

I thoroughly enjoy my life and get excited by most every part of it. But I don’t express it by way of a huge grin or by LOL’ing every other minute.

It’s not that I chose not to; it just doesn’t come naturally.

So while it’s true that people are more likely to click on a link if I tell them it’s the BEST THING EVER!!! OMG! I can’t even BELIEVE it!!!, doing so would ultimately be disingenuous.

Similarly, if I ever before doubted it, I now know that I am not a salesman.

I’m good at creating things which other people might want to buy, and I would very much like other people to buy them.

But the moment I step over to the ring the register, I become someone else. Someone not me.

I’ve come to realize that there has to be another way, and I am determined to find it, however long it takes.

For I can only be myself.

* * *

3. The only risks I’ll ever regret are the ones I never took.

By most people’s standards, these past six months could hardly be considered successful. They haven’t put bread on any tables. They haven’t beefed up any resumes or landed any jobs.

Some, I’m sure, would even go so far as to call them an outright failure.

I won’t deny that I have regrets. But I assure you, they have nothing to do with the leaps I’ve taken, and certainly don’t involve the many times I have fallen.

It’s true that there have been more beaten paths and detours than interstates and highways.

If ever there was a road map, I’ve misplaced it more often than I’ve found it.

But I know that it is better to have sought and not yet found than to have abandoned— or, worse, to have never even attempted— the seeking.

No, all I’ve ever regretted are the times when my fear of the risk was greater than my longing for the reward.

I can think of no more than a few; yet they are the only pieces of my past that will ever be able to haunt me.

*  *  *

(Read Part II here.)

Did you guess right? Did you see the mystery guest?

*Photo Credit: Trey Ratcliff (Creative Commons)