365 Days

Today, when I remembered that exactly one year ago I was hospitalized for 22 days for a series of treatments to save my life, I tweeted about it. And then I opened Day One.

In the app’s Calendar view, I changed the year to “2012” and, sure enough, the “August 1, 2012” entry was there, showing photos of my hospital room; my girlfriend sending a selfie from home; and a note that I wrote about the doctors being “nice”. Bits of life. A combination of old thoughts and visual memories that I still have, in some form, in my brain, but that here, in this app – right now – I can hold and directly look at. It is, indeed, far more powerful than memory alone.

It sounds so trivial because we’re used to it. It’s diary app! Of course it lets you browse old entries in a calendar, and of course it’s got search, and of course it accepts photos as attachments, and, okay, the fact that you can see old weather information is neat – but yes, it’s because of the GPS. Common technology terms for yet another app. But does it have a URL scheme? We often lose track of the magic of software.

Sometimes, on days like today, I like to appreciate the simple things of my job. The fact that somebody out there has made an app that lets me cringe at my mistakes and cherish old moments. The fact that in this very moment I can take these old photos, and send them to my parents with a comment that says, “365 days ago…how things change”.

Isn’t that amazing?