Is there a word or a phrase that describes the state of being hyper-aware of some aspect of your life that you never really noticed before? The closest equivalent I can think of is the Baader Meinhof Phenomenon, in which you encounter something - seemingly for the first time - only to keep encountering it again and again. I would liken the situation more to a particular form of optical illusion: at first it just appears to be a bunch of random blots, then something clicks in your brain, and you can see the picture (a man's face, a dog walking along a street, whatever). The catch is that the transition is one-way; once you identify what the picture IS, you can't NOT see it. There's no going back to just a bunch of random blots.
A while back, I encountered the word "Olēka", the awareness of how few days are memorable. Recently (the last two weeks or so) I have found myself increasingly aware of just how few days are memorable. Case in point: I finished a ten-hour shift about an hour ago. Much of that time is a blur, if not an outright blank. Most days are the same.
It is unsettling to look back and find that most past days are gone. For one thing, it calls into question whether or not those days even happened. For another, it suggests failure of the mind to operate properly. And also, it speaks loudly of nothing - the nothing that makes up my life. At thirty years of age, I have accomplished very little. If I were to drop dead right now, very little - if anything - would change. This is horrifying to me, and yet I do not know how to remedy this situation.
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