Oops

I didn't post anything yesterday, as some of you noticed.

It wasn't to do with booze - not a drop has passed my lips since Sunday night. There is a good reason for my failure to appear. Well, a reason at least.

I simply forgot.

It's been a long time since I forgot something like that - some essential daily task that should be impossible to overlook. This is not the same as remembering something had to be done, but choosing not to do it; there have been plenty of days when I've felt that way. Yesterday I sat at my computer for the best part of eight hours doing a wide variety of things: some writing; some code-monkey stuff; some database design; and some hopping around other people's blogs making a nuisance of myself. Much like any other day, in fact. And up until about three o'clock in the afternoon there was, in the back of my addled brain somewhere, the intention to post a blog. I had no idea what I would write about, but it was on my mental list of things to do.

And then it went away. So thoroughly, in fact, that it wasn't until Sandra reprimanded me this morning in the comments section that I realised what had happened.

My memory is a strange and terrifying place. It either holds onto things with embarrassing clarity, or disposes of them altogether. Curiously alcohol has little effect on whatever cognitive mechanism lurks in my lobes. I can recall with eye-watering, toe-curling detail most of the things I've done whilst under the influence*; I can remember the layouts of towns and cities years after I've been to them;** I can usually retrace a journey after driving it only once.

But I cannot remember people's names.

I've tried all those special memory techniques so beloved of American business gurus. You know the one where you repeat the person's name back to them as soon as they've been introduced, usually whilst shaking them firmly by the hand and staring intently into their eyes? Well for me that goes something like this:

Colleague: James, I'd like you to meet John.
James (taking John's hand and fixing him with a steely but friendly look): Hello, Steven, nice to meet you.

I'm not joking; the name can slip away before I've even registered it. There's just white noise when I play that bit of the conversation back in my head.

I've been in situations where I've been introduced to someone, talked to them for half an hour about things we both found extremely interesting, then not been able to remember their name at all. Usually though, I can remember the names of their dogs, which says something about something, but I'm not sure what about what.

But perhaps worse is that I know I can't remember people's names, so when I'm surrounded by a bunch of people I recognise by face (and my memory's remarkably good there, oddly enough), I am rendered speechless and terrified by the prospect of making a fool of myself. This is the root of my shyness, and I suspect the same is true for a lot of other shy people.

Which, all in all, is no excuse for not blogging yesterday. But at least it's given me something to write about today.


* And what my co-drinkers have been up to as well - often to their sad dismay.
** Except for the Roppongi district of Tokyo***, which had been bulldozed and rebuilt in the eighteen years between my visits. The rest of the city was fine.
*** And Hiroshima - the only place I've ever got completely lost. My mental compass went completely to pot there.