Strangers

More MS: I don't know if it's strictly an MS thing or if it's more properly a thing with optic neuritis, I think they're conflated, at least in my case. I have this really annoying inability to remember faces nowadays. I always considered myself pretty bad at remembering faces and names but now it's ridiculous. It's not just learning new faces, like my fellow players in Ingress, but old faces too, like all my colleagues.

There are about 700 employees in our office or roughly thereabouts. After 7 years with the company I thought I had a pretty good grasp on who most people were that had at least some contact with the stuff I do. I could chat pretty freely with anyone I met at the coffee machine.

I still remember those I work with daily or weekly and the people I have more personal relationships with but so many are complete strangers to me until I find something to connect with them. I find myself searching the intranet almost every day trying to remember who that guy was that I talked to in the elevator because I just know we had some incidents we worked on a while back, or who that cute girl was that I chatted with who seemed like she knew me.

I figure it's something with the pattern recognition or contour finding mechanisms. Since I still can't see most of those hidden numbers in the color spot plates I think it stands to reason that perhaps I just don't really see peoples' faces like I used to. Not that they look different, more like I just don't get the pattern trigger even before actually recollecting or remembering a face.

It's a minor hassle compared to having difficulty walking but it's pretty damn annoying.