I created the journaling app I wish I had all along.
In my young twenties a mentor told me to keep a journal. He told me memories were fleeting. That many of my so-called core memories now would be difficult to recall in just a matter of years. And that there will come a time where you’ve met and interacted with so many people that even some individuals you now consider friends will be little more than a face you recognize.
The analogy this mentor gave was penguins on an iceberg. You only have so much room before the penguins, your memories, start slipping off in favor of the ones at the center, the ones worth keeping.
It wasn’t meant to be disparaging advice or a curmudgeonly forewarning of the perils of aging. Quite the opposite. Keeping a journal affords not only a platform through which to store your timestamped thoughts and memories, but also a platform to which you can return and remember the details about the people in your life who matter. Filling up journal pages and thus allowing the journal to serve as a much-needed extension of your iceberg memory means you are filling your days with the human experience.
It’s been ten years since I received that advice, and ten years since I began to journal. For years I struggled to make journaling routine. I kept a physical journal that I would write in episodically before I went to bed only to stuff back in a drawer. Its utility was as an incomplete memory storage device and occasional repository for my thoughts. Often, I felt having that journal did more harm than good because I would feel guilty about not journaling and then find myself going months without writing or doing so only to check it off a self-imposed list of things I felt I had to do.
Only on my first deployment to Iraq did I find myself writing with discipline. I found it was a way to stay grounded and to reflect, and I had the foresight to know that the future me would want to be able to read about my experiences there through the eyes of the me that lived through it. It also became a part of my day that I controlled and that was just for me no matter what was happening around me.
When I got back to the states from that deployment in March 2020, I re-entered a society quickly isolating itself due to the pandemic. Journaling again became a hassle, not because I lacked the discipline but because I felt I had nothing worth writing about. As a result, the minutiae of my thoughts and ideas, and my interactions (limited as they may have been), are now lost to my now generalized recollection of that time period of being one of frustration and pent-up aggression, having just gone from a kinetic and intense deployment to the doldrums of COVID in California and an America on edge.
When my second deployment to the Indo-Pacific came around I committed to journaling once more and I once again picked up pen and journal every night for six months. My two deployment journals I now consider two of my prized possessions, for in them reside the memories of transformational experiences and people. Finally fully convinced of the wisdom of my aforementioned mentor and the benefits consistent journaling awarded me, I returned from that deployment determined to stick to the habit. But experience taught me the pen and paper method just didn’t work for me, so I looked for different options.
I’ve now been trying and using different apps nearly every day for the past three years, but I never did find the one app that functioned exactly how I wanted. I never cared for the gimmicky apps, and for the mainstream ones, I found it was not enough for me to be able to submit a journal entry and to add photos. I also wanted a journal that made it easy to remember the people that give my entries, and my days, life and color.
I wanted a dynamic, editable, and private page for each person I mentioned in my journal entries. I wanted this so I could, at a second’s notice, have access to the memories, inside jokes, family stories, and personal details that makes each relationship unique and special. I wanted this so when I sit across from the old college buddy or Navy friend I haven’t seen in a year, I don’t have to re-ask the same questions I did last time. I wanted this so I can be more present, more intentional, and authentic with the people in my life who matter most.
That’s why I created Notable. It’s a journal, first and foremost, but it’s a journal focused on the who, not just the what and the where. It helps me build a memory graph of my life, not for the public, and certainly not for social media likes. Just for me. It connects my memories to the people who made them meaningful, and in doing so it makes me a better friend, co-worker, and man.