Phone Notes

a diary kept in my notes app

The year of the snake is ending and I’ve been noticing how much I’ve been shedding without ceremony. Not in a way that announces itself as change more like habits falling away once they stop being useful.

I’ve been putting a lot of things into my phone lately. Fragments, observations, errands beside moments that feel harder to name. I don’t always know what I’m recording when I write them down only that my body seems to recognise something before my mind does.

I was on the train the other day and scrolled back through the notes. Read them all together, out of order. They didn’t feel like reminders anymore. They felt like a poem.

So I’m sharing them here as they are not as conclusions, not as a narrative just as a record of paying attention while something quietly shifts.

Phone Notes

Note 1
Didn’t feel scared flying today.
This matters.
I usually treat turbulence
like punishment waiting.

Note 2
I always feel
like I’m about to get in trouble.
Even at rest.
Especially at rest.

Note 3
ADHD day.
Thoughts overlapping.
Nothing broken.
Just loud.

Can’t sit still.

Note 4
Buy tofu.
Buy more tofu.

You said you wanted
to try my tofu on toast
and I wrote it down
like you promised.

Note 5
Noticed my body
doesn’t scan for exits
when you’re near.
This is new.

Note 6
You like it when I sing.
Not applause.
Just attention
lifting
then settling
like: yes.

Note 7
I like when you say of course.
It sounds like permission
I didn’t know I needed.

Note 8
Forgot to write this earlier.
When I ran from you at the beach
actually ran
I waited to be corrected.

I wasn’t.
I didn’t get in trouble.

We laughed.

Note 9
Client said something today
that cracked something open.
I held it gently.
I’m learning what it feels like
to be held back.

Note 10
Family is the first country
we learn to survive in.
I miss mine.

Note 11
Reading Jung’s Red Book.
Thinking about images.
How seriously he takes them.
How little I’ve trusted mine.

Note 12
I want to make jewellery.
Small.
Heavy.
Proof that pressure
can become shape.

Note 13
Capitalism is evil.
This is not a metaphor.
I am tired of monetising my nervous system.
I am tired of scheduling rest.
I am tired of worth being measured by output.

Remember to say this more quietly in public.

Note 14
I shared something painful.
Unfinished.
Unuseful.
You didn’t fix me.

My body exhaled
before my mind caught up.

Note 15
You bought mangos.
Left them out.
No explanation.

I keep writing this down
because my body
won’t let it go.

Note 16
You washed my clothes.
Folded them.
Left them on the bed.

No lesson.
No ledger.

Note 17
I like your laugh.
I trust it.

Note 18
I told you how busy I am
and waited for you
to take it personally.

You didn’t.
Something in me softened.

Note 19
Oppressed divas?
This might be a joke.
This might be a thesis!

Do I look oppressed?

Note 20
At night I think of you
in the smallest way.
Not futures.
Details.
The way safety
doesn’t announce itself.

Note 21
I don’t rehearse afterward.
No replay.
No self-edit.

this feels safe.
this feels allowed.

Note 22
Whatever this is
isn’t asking to be named.
It’s teaching me
how to stay.

Note 23
I’m still writing.
That’s how I know
something is happening.

Note 24
Haven’t seen the sun in four days.
It’s starting to make me anxious
in a low-grade, chemical way.

Buy vitamin D.
Don’t forget this.

Note 25
I slept in your bed
and slept so soundly
it startled me.

Like my body recognised it
as familiar.

Note 26
So many people have died
in the last few weeks.
Some young.
Some old.

My heart keeps breaking
quietly
for the people I love
who are still here.

Note 27
I feel like I’m becoming
the next version of myself.
A reboot, not an upgrade.

It doesn’t feel good.
I feel old.
I long to be younger
even as something in me
keeps relentlessly moving forward anyway.

Note 28
Possibly becoming someone new.
Possibly just gay
and hungry.

Note 29
Reminder:
drink water.
Stop analysing.
Go outside if possible.

Touch some grass with your face.

Note 30
If this is what noticing looks like,
then maybe this is how I live now
not ahead of myself,
not behind,
just here,
writing things down
so I don’t disappear from them.