I Can't Remember My Passwords Anymore Because It's Too Damn Hard To Remember All Of Them

It all started with PayPal.  Taking a quick glance through my Spam I saw that "supposedly" I made a payment to some guy I didn't know through it.  That's when I remembered that my password for my PayPal isn't the strongest, so I finally acted on the passing thoughts I've had on my password over the past few years and changed it.

Then, some time this week, Yahoo! told me to change my password while at a library computer.  (I really don't remember when: I haven't been to a library computer between this past weekend and yesterday [Thursday], and I'm sure this warning, that Yahoo! detected that someone either successfully hacked or tried to hack my e-mail, happened earlier this week.)  This is my e-mail password, so I did what any normal person would do: I changed it.  But to what?  I've done that from time to time, but this time I realized something: The new, longer, stronger password I'll put in is something I probably won't remember.  And then I realized that I can't remember the new PayPal password.

After trying to get back into my bank and access my temp timesheet Wednesday and failing (and getting locked out) on both sites, I now have to admit that I have a problem with passwords.  Before it was easy getting into all my secure accounts online because I only had one.  I knew that was not safe, but the few passwords I used were manageable and easy enough to remember.  But now that all passwords online have to be at least eight characters long and include an uppercase letter and/or a number and/or a symbol, I tried an even larger array of gobbledygook so that my accounts would be safe.  Only now have I realized I've bit off more than I can chew in thinking I can remember all of them, but I'm sure I forgot at least one of my new passwords soon after this generalized push to strengthen them began.

What I should do now is cull on the sites that use passwords together, try to go through each and see if I can get into them, write down the passwords that do work and write down new passwords for the ones that don't ... and then store that list in a fucking safe somewhere.  Then, if I forget, I can just go to the safe, try to remember the goddamn combination, and grab that password list.  That's the only way my stuff online can truly be safe; make it so hard for anyone to penetrate my accounts that even I can't penetrate them.

Yeah, fuck my life.