10iary: Ten Year Diary

I couldn't remember what I did on this day last year. Not one thing. That's what 10iary is for. You write one line today. Next year on this date, a new line goes underneath it. Ten years in, this one date holds ten of you. I bought a paper ten-year diary the year I turned thirty. I liked imagining the forty-year-old who'd finish it. It was thick. It was heavy. It lived on my desk, and I was never there on the days I had something to say. I stopped opening it. This one is on my phone. I write it in line, on the bus, in the minute before I turn out the light. Diaries don't die of laziness. They die on ordinary days — nothing happened, nothing to say, and then it's tomorrow. After three missed days, the blanks start to feel like homework. So you get 200 characters. That's the whole day. Small on purpose, so you're never on the hook for explaining it. No words at all? Choose one feeling. That's a day, kept. Leave the gaps where they are. Start again today. Annoyed. Resentful. Hurt. Worried. I called all of it "stressed." Turns out I only really used five or six feeling words. Reading an entry back a year later, I couldn't tell what had actually been wrong. 10iary has 284 of them, sorted into 23 groups by meaning. Search for the word you already know. Read down a group to find the one you didn't. Weather is words too — 55 of them, no icons. One clear day dazzles. The next is luminous. Not the same day. I blogged for five years before I noticed I have seasons. Same weeks every year, same slow sink. One day tells you nothing. Ten of the same date, read together, tell you plenty. 10iary shows you the words you chose, exactly as you chose them. It will never say "a low month." Why they piled up is yours to work out. Will this still open in ten years? Will this app still exist? That's what kept me up. You can export all of it, any time, in one go — files that open with or without 10iary. No account. No sign-up. No server holding your diary. It stays on this device. I built this to get to know myself a little better. Which season pulls me under. What I'm glad about, over and over. What I swore had changed and hasn't. I'm keeping today while I still remember it, so I'm not guessing later. Keep today in one line. The piece of today you'd want to meet again, a year from now.