Notes: An introduction to a chaotic inventory of my changing self.
For much of my life, I’ve been obsessed with the impermanence that pervades human life. As a child I was terrified of the things we forget, the things we let go of consciously and unconsciously. I remember once asking my parents if they were still friends with the people they went to elementary school with, and they both answered “I barely remember the name of my school”. They said that they both kept in touch with 1–2 friends they knew from before they were 18. To a 7 year old, they were basically telling me that everything I knew to be life, everything that composed my world, would one day vanish as if it had never happened. Who I was would soon evaporate into the future and I would forget where I had been, what it had felt like to be who I was.
With every subsequent step forward in time, versions of my past self disappeared. And though the reverberations of those former selves still echo throughout every new iteration of myself, more and more of them are replaced by all together new experiences, thoughts, and feelings. By the time we reach adulthood, we are left with so little of what we once were, we shed so much of the people, places, and experiences that were once our whole lives. I’ve always felt unsettled by this unshakable fact of life.
As a result of my fear of the transient nature of life, I began cataloguing my thoughts, ideas, and experiences. I collected the tickets to every sporting event I attended, held onto the doodles I drew on the edges of my homework, and even stored away clothes that no longer fit me as keepsakes that I didn’t want to part with. However, the notes app on my phone has been the primary place where I’ve fought my uphill battle against impermanence.
I got my first phone in 7th grade, when I was about 13 years old. After quickly discovering the notes app, my phone functioned as a digital notepad that I carried with me nearly everywhere I went. I got in the habit of writing down any and every passing thought, no matter how trivial or half-baked. After some time, I began organizing these stream of consciousness musings into increasingly specific sections: there was the note for songs I wanted to learn on bass, quotes I’d read in books, ideas for movies, my favorite abandoned buildings in the area, words that I don’t like the sound of, various to-do lists, and many, many others. Being able to neatly categorize my thoughts like this offered me a sense of control over a world that felt increasingly chaotic and uncontrollable. I was fascinated by the idea of trying to take my incoherent reality and force it into a format that made it somewhat more intelligible.
Some of the notes are very personal, others are basically jokes. There are a few that I consider “finished” and others that are in a constant state of growing, evolving, and expanding. Although many notes have been “out of use” for years, the total tally, as of March 4th, 2021, is 239. Every single one is valuable — to some degree — to me. Some serve as a way of holding onto memories I don’t want to forget, others as irrefutable evidence that I once existed, and many are simply my attempts at making sense out of what’s going on inside and outside of my brain.
I think the content of these notes could explain the totality of my being more clearly than even the people closest to me. Hell, it could probably tell you more about my self than I could. I forget a lot of what has happened to me in life, be it through subconscious suppression, a naturally spotty memory, or various concussions and blunt trauma to the head. Conversely, the notes don’t forget anything, they are perfectly preserved the moment they are typed.
My notes remind me of who I used to be, or at least who I used to think I used to be. I wouldn’t say that there’s any single linear narrative of personal growth that can be drawn from these notes, though. Just like basically everybody in the world I’ve changed a lot over the course of my life, but I’ve also remained the same in many ways. These notes are a palimpsest of my personality, with some older notes fading into disuse and newer ones taking their place. I’ve come to think of them as a museum of me, with new additions constantly being constructed and old exhibits slowly vanishing from sight with the passage of time.
I understand that these notes are no more likely to stand the test of time than any of the other works of human creativity that have already been forgotten. I understand that trying to reverse the flow of time is physically impossible. I understand that trying to hold onto things that are already gone is about as practical as trying to build a house on top of quicksand, but I do it nonetheless. At this point, I’m committed to this exercise in futility and I plan on continuing it into the future.
My intention for this archive is to select specific notes that underscore my passion for holding onto fleeting things, how my personality is reflected in these notes, and how the changes I’ve undergone in my life can be traced through the hisotry of these notes.
