Beneath the carefully selected retro-modernist wallpaper and impossibly hackable password of my new iPhone 11 lies an impressively pristine organization of my home screen with the help of the new iOS 14 update. Inspired by my latest fanatic obsession with Avatar the Last Airbender, each page demonstrates the beautiful color scheme of the four bending nations of water, earth, fire, and air, living together in harmony on my home screen. Each app shines with its carefully attributed icon covers and is neatly tucked away in its accompanying folder and all of my notifications have been promptly cleaned to the satisfyingly even number of zero. I always strived for zero in my life. Zero always meant completeness and thoroughness. It meant that everything was in its correct place at the right time. It meant the closing of something old and the beginning of something new. As I finished putting the last label on my folder, I stopped to admire my work. Everything looked perfect and by the looks of the glittering finished product, I had my life together. However, I quickly realized my far-reaching efforts in transforming my cellular interior design failed to reach one particular corner, currently induced in tumultuous disorder. Now, every time I open my phone, a part of me felt bothered by the unlabeled documents, unspecified numbers, and fragmented sentences that make up the clutter of my Notes App. Normally, my diligent nature would have driven me to make folders and sub-folders to organize the chaos yet, I never had any anticipated effort in doing so. My unusual hoarding nature clung to the comfort of what lay within my sacred retreat. To me, the Notes App was the one thing in my life that accurately represented the reality of the fragmented, hundred miles/hour nature of my thoughts. Something about the dark background setting provided a moody and edgy ambiance, allowing for an immersive writing environment for me to pour my soul into. It housed anything from my deepest secrets, to my existential 3 am epiphanies, to witty clothes puns in the instance I ever needed one at the drop of a hat. To me, the Notes App is a storage abyss for my mind, allowing me to free my soul of the things I want to forget but have a record of having pondered.

***

One of the most revolutionary discoveries in all of human history was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. It allowed humans to finally decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, opening a world of demotic characters and ancient life stories. It is quite a hefty statement but in my eyes, my Notes App is my own Rosetta Stone. Scrolling back into the rabbit hole of 600 notes ago, I can decipher the memories that I was unaware of and feel a sense of appreciation about them. The scroll of “Celebrity Crushes!!!!!!” from 7th grade makes me cringe at my dying pre-teen obsessions and strange perception of love. My dictionary of “Great ~EXpReSsIvE~ Vocabulary Words” from my 8th grade summer reading makes me laugh as I remember pretentiously trying to use “melancholy” in any instance I could, thinking I was so academically inclined. My list of “*To-dos and Not-to-dos*” of public speaking for my first job interview as a secretary in 9th grade makes me grateful for all of my growth in overcoming my phone anxiety. The locked, drafted letter that I sent to myself five years from now in quarantine provides me with a sense of excitement and possibility in being able to read my consciousness from a new perspective.

For me, my Notes App allows me to have a window into my past life and a full stream of consciousness recorded for myself to enjoy in my future life. Looking back upon these notes, I feel a sense of longing to regress while also a sense of relief of having moved on. My Notes App has given me the ability to journalize the ups and downs of my life and has helped me to grow as a person. And who knows. Perhaps one day, ten thousand years from now, my Notes App will become the Rose(n)etta Stone of the new modern age in understanding the life of a Gen Z teenager during the Age of Covid-19.