“Ruminations on Recall” is a biweekly column on memory, and how it’s refracted and warped by the world we live in.
Every time I pass a gaggle of turtlenecked, elbow-patched, satchel-sashed grad students, I imagine them scoffing at my ways. Beneath the grand, gothic Yale buildings, it feels wrong not to have a delicately embroidered, colorfully stitched antique journal. Do I stick out like a sore thumb for diarying my musings, of all places, in a Notes App? I’ve tried their way, though. I’ve had the physical journal—a few in fact—but that practice never stuck for a couple of reasons.
First of all, when I have an idea, I like to write it down immediately. The short but nonetheless extra step of finding a pencil, grabbing my journal, opening to a clean page, and then writing is often enough to stop me from getting words on the page altogether.
More than that though, at the beginning of the summer, my journal of the past three years disappeared. Yup, I lost it. It was quite literally alone in the world––detached from my hip and my tight grasp. Fear bubbled throughout my entire body. I’m a pretty private person, so the idea that absolutely anyone could have access to my innermost thoughts scared the living shit out of me.
I relayed the news to two of my friends. One of them heightened my initial anxiety by jitteringly responding, omg I’d kill myself if that ever happened to me. Well, geez. Ok… thanks for the advice? I’ll get on that. I quipped in reply. The other, however, just calmly observed that sometimes the universe gives you signs when it wants you to let go and start anew. I took in what she said and decided I wanted to believe her: maybe it wasn’t good that I was physically carrying three years of baggage with me everywhere I went. The preliminary panic washed over me like a passing wave. So, sure, the loss of my journal meant any random stranger could have access to my mind, but it also freed me from holding the physical weight of all of my most unpleasant thoughts.
All this to say that I now use my Notes App religiously, and I wouldn’t have it any other way (I mean quite literally, because I don’t ~have~ my journal anymore anyway).
Among the many advantages I discovered is the guaranteed privacy of my new method: I can put a little animated lock on anything whenever I deem it necessary. It also accommodates my laziness: I never even have to hunt for a writing utensil when something pops into my head. Because of this ease, I’ve gotten into the habit of writing down literally everything that pops into my head. Daily to-do lists, overheard quotes, recipes, and every weird, funny, unfiltered thought I have. Just for fun, shall we take a random scroll? Okay, why not?
September 2, 2025 at 12:37 p.m.: “These boots were made for stomping on bitches.” And that’s just what they’ll do.
September 3, 2025 at 3:31 a.m.: “Ayahuasca bucket decorating circle” Genuinely, what the hell? Was this a dream? I don’t know or remember, but my Notes App sure does. To clarify for any readers eager to sign up, I have not hosted an event like this before (but I also wouldn’t be opposed to the idea…).
August 17, 2025 at 7:03 p.m.: “Sad clown suicide” I don’t know why this sparked in my mind, but you can’t lie—it kinda has a ring to it.
August 26, 2025 at 12:06 p.m.: “Things I wanna tackle in therapy” Oh, you best believe there’s a big fat lock on that one. Alongside September 7’s “existing” and September 1’s “what’s happening” which are also tightly bolted up with that handy dandy cartoon latch.
May 3, 2025 at 4:35 p.m.: “I’m so bad with endings.” Yeah.
There’s some paradoxical irony in the urgency we feel to just get it on the page, a practice that any/every creative writing teacher has probably shoved down your throat. With our Notes App, sure, we are getting it on the page, but almost too quickly. Our thumbs frantically scramble to reach for the nearest and least keys necessary, leaving half-sensical statements and scattered letters on the screen, only to completely lose the meaning behind that immediacy upon return. Sometimes I feel like an idea is so fleeting that I need to get it down in as few characters as possible, but then when I go back to decipher my so-called epiphany, all I read is “pumpernickel…”.
It’s sadistic, like a puzzle made of pieces that never fit quite right and a corner that’s somehow always missing. But I’m addicted to the game. I return time and time again, jotting things down just to stare at the incomplete puzzle resting sadly on the black background.
In a way, there’s a touch of sweetness in the trust we have in our current selves: I trust that what she has to write is so worthwhile that my future self will remember what I mean, even though, in reality, I won’t.
My faulty logic is that writing in my Notes App is like throwing spaghetti at a wall. Most of the time, my words are lost in the overcomplicated, underexplained marinara sauce, and the pasta slowly slips and splatters onto the floor. But, sometimes, just sometimes, I return and it sticks: the spaghetti smiling at me, eye-level. Don’t believe me? This article started out in my Notes App from a feebly fragmented phrase at 11:51 PM on September 8, and look at it now: a handful of al dente spaghetti proudly smeared on the wall.