Understory: Yearly Journal

A year goes by and you cannot say what changed in it. Not because nothing changed, but because nothing ever asked, so nothing got written down. One year blurs into the one before it, and a decade goes missing that way. Understory asks. Once a year, on one day, it puts twenty five questions to you. You answer in your own words, it seals them into a ring, and then it leaves you alone until this day next year. That is the whole app. No feed, no streak, no daily prompt, nothing to keep up with. WHY ONCE A YEAR AND NOT EVERY DAY You cannot see yourself from inside a Tuesday. A day is too close to hold any change, which is why daily journals fill with weather and admin and stop in February. A year is the shortest distance at which growth is visible: what you wanted, what frightened you, what you would have sworn was true. Ask the same question twelve months apart and the gap between the two…