the graveyard that is my notes folder
here lies 5-year plans, unsent texts, endless lists.
I’m searching for a note I wrote last year.
It’s a list of things I enjoyed eating so much that I googled them to buy, but I never buy them. Because the act of searching them up, seeing how much a pack of 20 costs, contemplating buying them, and instead writing it down feels good in a way. Controlled implusion. I usually search for this list to expand it, but it has a high criterion— only four additions since I began it in 2022. The snack has to be totally perfect, like: “I’m contemplating buying a 50-pack” level of perfect. I started the list whilst I was writing my MA dissertation. I was searching for a sweet treat to keep me going during a full day in the library and found the incredible Cornflake Ritter. I still remember biting into one, the chocolate melting under my warm fingers as I typed away, or more accurately stared out the window, hating life. The other day, I was searching for that list to revisit this exact memory. If I close my eyes, I can still imagine it, sitting in my favourite spot in the library, looking out at the UCL building ahead, the wind dancing through the trees, bringing quiet refuge to a hot June afternoon. I finished my first-ever Cornflake Ritter bar, and I was disappointed the minute it ended. I pushed my dissertation aside to a new tab, googling ‘Cornflake Ritter’, lightly shopping through the Google ads, and wrote it down in my notes. And thus began the list.
This list sits amongst a catalogue of its peers, half-finished thoughts, grocery lists, random budgets, 5-year plans (some written more than 5 years ago), poems in every stage of completion and texts I drafted before sending (some still unsent). Last week, I was searching for an old email I had written and instead found a note listing every wedding episode from my favourite sitcoms. I’d written this one at 3 am, thinking that if I ever get married, I’ll watch these all in the weeks leading up to it. Some notes start with oat milk, butter, bread and end with book recommendations. There’s that list that every girl has, the list that every writer has, the list that every planner has. The pros and cons stem from buying a new pair of trainers to saying yes to a job offer.
And this is just my notes app, I have prolific journals kept since 2013, full of more endless scribblings. I write a lot, especially when I know no one is reading it. There’s no pressure of completion, sometimes the satisfaction lies in the writing of it, and retrospectively, each entry, note or plan reminds me of who I was at the time of writing.
Unfortunately, this does make a lot of my notes akin to dead ends, unfinished ideas and a graveyard of past aspirations. According to my 5-year plan, penned in the liminal space between Christmas and New Year in 2023, I should be living alone in Europe, cycling without fear by now. But it doesn’t feel bitter in any way. There was a time when all I wanted to do was stick to that plan, but that’s not how the world works, and I’m glad it isn’t. The journey life takes you on is much sweeter, much harder, much more worth it than lists of ideas of how it should look.
In a way, the unfinishedness of my notes app, the unkept promises, and the texts I didn’t send have all played a part in my practice of letting go. There is something so complete about writing and just moving on. Especially when letting go is not an instinct for me. But something about the process of memorialising through writing feels like closure. It also feels satisfying, as if I’ve organised some of the chaos or feeling into something more manageable. Even if I never return to that note, that text or to-do list, I still feel as if I have retained control over whatever the subject was. To have an avenue to get those feelings out without undermining the agency and goodwill of the people around you is a huge win for me.
Through my unfinished notes, I realise now that I can’t and shouldn’t control everything. I’m still working on this feeling becoming my first instinct and not my learned instinct, but the reward of letting go and having everything work out feels sweeter every time.
So, I’m adding to my notes, I’m writing down ‘San Nicasio Smoked Paprika Crisps’ with no intention of buying that 10-pack of them. Because they were banging. And I want to remember the nice snacks my mum buys every time I come home. And I let it go, knowing eventually, they’ll be back in my life again.