“Now and When” Released!

I am pleased to announce the release of version 1.0 of “Now and When”, a journal app that has been a passion project for me.

I have been a lifelong journal keeper. I find that it’s the best way to focus and craft your life (and a great way to complain about things without upsetting everyone else). I started with paper journals and moved to digital with my first MacBook, even toyed with various blogs. When the first iPad was announced, though, this seemed to be the perfect journal medium to me. The ease of holding a pad of paper, with the power of a computer. However, I have been disappointed with every journal app I have tried over the years. No offense to any of the developers, as they have all been fine apps, but I have finicky tastes and write a lot. So, an app that starts getting sluggish after importing a decade or two of entries, collected over the years, becomes more of a frustration than a pleasure (which journal writing should be).

Additionally, I have longed to be able to look at an overview of my (ahem, long) life, to see how far I have come and maybe detect patterns that could change. Where changes have taken place, I wanted to denote those changes with a different look or feel, capturing a sense of that era (life in the 1980s or 1990s versus life in the 21st century, for example). Almost like what sepia tone does for photos, but for words instead.

Anyway, despite having a coding background, I wasn’t an app developer, and life (and rent and bills) got in the way, so I put the dream of writing my own app on the back burner. Then my life was put on hold when I found myself suddenly caring for my (now sadly deceased) father, who had been diagnosed with dementia. Partly prompted by watching his own memory decline and desperately needing something to cling onto to maintain my sanity, I pulled the journal app dream off the back burner, hunkered down, and taught myself Swift coding in my spare time. Slowly, I crafted the digital journal that I always wanted.

So here we are today. I have an app that I am very happy with (and use multiple times a day), and I hope other people can get the same pleasure out of it that I have. I would love to create a community around this thing and work toward the perfect journal app for people like me who are passionate about their past, present, and future.