process and order

There's the preparation and wondering--speculating before the journey. Then there's the journey and experience itself. It happens and I react. I see, think and process it. It's what's interesting at the moment and what matters.

Now it's after the journey and for me, it's putting it all in order. The days become identified by the impressions that occurred on that segment. It starts as simplistic--the hard day, the easy day, the sunny day, the day cockleburs attached themselves to my butt. Then, as my brain keeps reviewing and hard-wiring itself to fixate on strings of nuances and importances, it becomes more complicated. The hard day had varying elements that were overlooked when, filled with physical pain and exhaustion, I could only think of my sense of relief and the difficult thing I had just managed.

How to tap in to the full string of experience? Would my brain be able to handle everything? I read that maybe what becomes long-term memory are the things that are the most relevant, most traumatic, most impactful. But my expectation for what is important at that moment colors that. All of these other things are happening. The best we can do is grab on to as much as we can while it's happening. Otherwise, our memory mainly becomes a construction--tying lines from one small experience to another--fabricating their sequence and meaning.