My Own Little Experiment with Forgetting
I always thought having a sharp memory was the bee's knees. You know, remembering every little detail, every past project, every mistake I ever made. I figured it made me smart, prepared. Boy, was I wrong. It mostly just made me anxious and stuck in the past, if I'm being honest.
There was this one period, a few years back, I was working on this absolutely massive, soul-crushing project. We're talking long hours, new technologies I was barely grasping, and constant pressure. I barely had brainpower left to remember to eat, let alone recall the intricate details of some software I wrote like, five years prior. My brain was just full. Overflowing, really. I just had to let some old stuff go, mentally speaking.
And you know what? It was kind of a relief. A huge one, actually.
Before this, if a new task came up that was even slightly similar to something old, my mind would instantly dredge up:
- Every single thing that went wrong last time.
- The exact, convoluted way I eventually solved it, or tried to.
- All the stress and frustration associated with it, which was a lot.
It was like trying to run a race with a backpack full of rocks. I just couldn't approach anything fresh. I'd start a new thing already tired out by old memories.
But after that mega-project, when my brain had seemingly "archived" a lot of that old baggage just to survive, I started noticing something. When I faced similar challenges again, the solutions felt… simpler. I wasn’t bogged down by the ghosts of past failures or overly complicated methods I'd convinced myself were brilliant. It was like I could finally see the forest for the trees, or something like that. My old "perfect recall" was actually a curse, making me overthink everything and repeat old patterns.
It sounds weird to say, but I think my brain just kind of... force-quit on holding onto so much useless junk. And I’m so much better for it. I’d spend hours, days even, stuck on how I used to do things, or how things used to be. What a waste of time, eh? I was just spinning my wheels.
So, yeah. Blessed are the forgetful. Not in a "be irresponsible and forget your keys" kind of way, but in a "let go of the unnecessary crap that's weighing you down" kind of way. It’s like decluttering your mind. Suddenly, there’s space for new ideas, new approaches. I actually try to consciously let things go now. If a project is done, it's done. I pull out the big lessons, sure, but I actively try to forget the noise, the small frustrations, the dead ends. What’s the point in carrying all that?
It’s made my work less stressful, and honestly, I think I’m more creative now. It’s a bit like wiping a slate clean. Sometimes, that’s exactly what you need. Turns out, my brain trying to save itself from exploding by just dumping information was actually doing me a huge favor. Who knew? Definitely feeling a bit more blessed these days by not remembering every single little thing.
