Thread by @AlexandraErin

Got a message from a convention acquaintance saying there's no way I could really not remember what year my post-vax vacation was since it's tied to WisCon weekend. I went to in-person con in 2019, and the online con in 2020, so I *must* know my non-con trip to Madison was 2021.

https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1482845900464705544

And the thing is, they are correct about those dates, I'm pretty sure, because when I stop and think about the covid-19 timeline -- that it was identified late in 2019 and 2020 was the first real pandemic year -- it lines up and makes sense.

I would have gone to WisCon in 2019 because covid wasn't even on the radar yet and the con happened normally. 2020 was the year it went online only. 2021 was the year that they opened the convention block of hotel rooms up but did not hold an in-person con. That was my vacation.

But I can't *recall* this information in the sense of just thinking about a convention-related event and it comes to the front of my mind with a year attached. I have no idea what year any significant-to-me Wiscon-related event happened. I can only sometimes reason it out.

The person who very gently accused me of stretching the truth to make a point has a mind that remembers things differently than mine. Their WisCon memories are sequential, ordered, and dated, or close enough to it that no conscious thought is required to order and date them.

There are people in Katelyn's mentions saying things like "I know you're lying because I remember exactly when my shots were. How could I forget something that important?"

Bully for you, but I've sometimes forgotten six important things before breakfast.

Dates -- years in particular -- are not significant to me because I don't think in them. It's a self-reinforcing cycle. If you don't think in terms of what calendar year something happened, then none of the memories that form attached to the memory have a year in them, either.

The most significant date in my life personally that has happened in the last decade is my mother's death.

It's the day after my birthday, the year before the pandemic.

[Do not reply with sentiment. It is not necessary and I am not interested in feeling anything at the moment.]

If it hadn't happened so close to my birthday, I'd be remembering its proximity to some other static time of year. If I hadn't spent the pandemic thinking about how it would have affected her, I would have no idea what year it was, only that it was both too soon and too recent.

And even with that, I still have to do a Twitter search for a tweet from my account with a specific lyric from "A Wonderful World" that I know I only ever tweeted in one thread the month after she died in order to be *sure* *sure* what year it was.