Understory: Yearly Journal

A year goes by and blurs into the one before it, because nothing ever asked. Once a year Understory asks, you answer in your own words, and it keeps them for good.

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 answers is the thing you could never see on the day.

Looking inward is not a mood, it is the part of learning almost everyone skips, because nothing in an ordinary life books the time for it. Understory books it. One day a year, and then silence.

TWENTY FIVE QUESTIONS, AND THEY MOVE Ten are asked every year without fail, so a decade of them reads straight down the page. Fifteen more are drawn from a bank written for that tree and never repeat the year before. One hundred and eighty questions were written for this app, and none is generated. They are not there to be pleasant: they ask what produced most of the good in your year, what produced most of the bad, and what you will stop.

FOUR JOURNEYS, A TREE EACH Different parts of a life, kept separately. Each grows at its own pace, on its own anniversary. You. The one nobody else answers and nobody else reads. It is the only tree that can never be shared, which is what makes it safe to be honest in.

The two of you. Answered together, in the same room, and kept by both of you. One question, two people, and what you each thought was true that year.

Your household. Everyone under one roof answering the same thing. A child answers it differently at nine than at nineteen, and the tree keeps both.

Your companions. A tree for every animal in your life. Written while they are still beside you, which is the only time it can be. The three shared trees are held in full by everyone on them. Connecting happens once, and somebody leaving does not take a year off anybody else's phone.

IT GROWS WITH WHAT YOU PUT IN IT A tree ages by rings, not by birthdays. Answer a year and it grows; leave a year unanswered and it waits for you. Ten years in, the trunk is a decade of your own writing, and you can read back exactly what changed and what never did. Most people are guessing about their own progress. This is the evidence.

YOUR WRITING STAYS ON YOUR PHONE There is no account, no sign up, no email address and no server holding your answers. We do not have your writing and could not hand it over if we were asked.

Years travelling between paired phones are encrypted before they leave, with a key that never leaves the two phones. Dictation runs on your phone too, and if it cannot transcribe on device the microphone is removed rather than falling back to a server.

You can take everything out at any time, paid or not: a PDF to read and keep, and a file that can be brought back in. Both are made on your phone.

THE FOUNDATIONS Underneath the trees, the things that hold steady. The song, the film, the hill you would die on. Not asked once a year: they sit there, and you change them when they change.

WHAT IT COSTS One payment, once. No subscription, no renewal. Your first tree is free and stays free, whether you started it or somebody shared it with you. Rings are never charged for.

Notifications, if you allow them, arrive a month before a tree's anniversary, a week before, and on the day. Each is scheduled by your phone.

Understory is for the version of you that will be reading this in twenty years.