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Memories, Pictures, and Writing
Mar. 29th, 2025 02:59 pmFor about 24 hours, I forgot my phone PIN, resulting in me being locked out of my phone for about 30 hours (as a security feature, when you keep entering incorrect PINs, the phone starts locking you out from attempting for longer and longer periods of time, and my phone imposed a 12 hour lockout between my penultimate attempt and my successful attempt). This forgetting has me worried about possible cognitive decline, although a more important cause is probably better lotion application to my hands, resulting in fewer times I have to use (and therefore renew my memory of) my PIN. In addition to thinking about my memory, this 30 hour phone lockout has me thinking of muscle memory, pictures, and writing.
I mostly use muscle memory for PINs, and this causes trouble fairly often. Just this week, my workplace changed the PIN on the employee area doors, and I’m obviously entering the old one, and having to then enter the new one. (Having to think explicitly about the work door PIN is probably part of what shoved my own personal phone PIN out of my brain.) Last fall, I completely forgot my debit card PIN for about a week. And, then, suddenly, it came back to me.
Muscle memory is an older thing in humans than remembering numbers, and I’ve always been personally pretty terrible at memorization, especially memorizing numbers. I’m quite good at muscle memory, but numbers on a screen or a num pad are not a great application of muscle memory, especially because, for me, I do eventually forget the actual numbers, and then I fail to enter the correct number.
While I was locked out of my phone, I couldn’t take pictures. I normally take a lot of pictures. My picture taking habit is causing problems (I’ve nearly filled my paid google account storage, and don’t really want to pay more), but I think of humans as being inherently very visual, and I think that the ease of taking and sharing pictures is a kind of a return to more evolutionarily relevant way of sharing reality with others. In fact, I bought my mom and my sister their first smart phones in large part because I wanted them to take and send me pictures. The letter writing of the 1700s seems less natural for humans than the picture and video sharing of the modern era.
That said, while I value my pictures of snow and crocuses from a decade ago, I value my own writing, in particular the writing on my old LJ account, much more. I don’t have all of that saved anywhere, and it would take much less memory to save everything I’ve ever written than a week worth of pictures. Way back in middle school, I realized that writing is a very important part of thinking, for me. In the gap of time between LJ and this account, I didn’t do very much writing, and I also didn’t do very much reading. I read Thomas Princen’s The Logic of Sufficiency at least twice, but I didn’t ever get around to reviewing it, so I don’t actually know what I think about it. Right now I’m reading it yet again, and hopefully I’ll actually review it soon.
Muscle memory and images are very human things, but writing is something that I value even more. And, even if writing doesn’t end up pushing back the usual mental decline that eventually comes with aging, it will give me a lot of valuable ideas and opinions.
I mostly use muscle memory for PINs, and this causes trouble fairly often. Just this week, my workplace changed the PIN on the employee area doors, and I’m obviously entering the old one, and having to then enter the new one. (Having to think explicitly about the work door PIN is probably part of what shoved my own personal phone PIN out of my brain.) Last fall, I completely forgot my debit card PIN for about a week. And, then, suddenly, it came back to me.
Muscle memory is an older thing in humans than remembering numbers, and I’ve always been personally pretty terrible at memorization, especially memorizing numbers. I’m quite good at muscle memory, but numbers on a screen or a num pad are not a great application of muscle memory, especially because, for me, I do eventually forget the actual numbers, and then I fail to enter the correct number.
While I was locked out of my phone, I couldn’t take pictures. I normally take a lot of pictures. My picture taking habit is causing problems (I’ve nearly filled my paid google account storage, and don’t really want to pay more), but I think of humans as being inherently very visual, and I think that the ease of taking and sharing pictures is a kind of a return to more evolutionarily relevant way of sharing reality with others. In fact, I bought my mom and my sister their first smart phones in large part because I wanted them to take and send me pictures. The letter writing of the 1700s seems less natural for humans than the picture and video sharing of the modern era.
That said, while I value my pictures of snow and crocuses from a decade ago, I value my own writing, in particular the writing on my old LJ account, much more. I don’t have all of that saved anywhere, and it would take much less memory to save everything I’ve ever written than a week worth of pictures. Way back in middle school, I realized that writing is a very important part of thinking, for me. In the gap of time between LJ and this account, I didn’t do very much writing, and I also didn’t do very much reading. I read Thomas Princen’s The Logic of Sufficiency at least twice, but I didn’t ever get around to reviewing it, so I don’t actually know what I think about it. Right now I’m reading it yet again, and hopefully I’ll actually review it soon.
Muscle memory and images are very human things, but writing is something that I value even more. And, even if writing doesn’t end up pushing back the usual mental decline that eventually comes with aging, it will give me a lot of valuable ideas and opinions.
