The notification came in just after eight: a friend had sent a link to an app — a journaling thing, works across every device, syncs everywhere automatically. I closed the message without replying and sat back, and noticed my jaw was tight.
I stayed with that for a moment. The jaw tightness is a signal I've learned to read as resistance to something I'm not yet ready to name. My thought, when I tried to surface it, was roughly: why would I want my journal to follow me around? The feeling underneath was harder to classify — something close to mild threat or mild contempt, which is usually how I respond when something plausible unsettles me.
The honest version: I've kept journals in three separate places for years. A paper notebook on the desk. Voice notes I leave myself on long walks, which I rarely listen back to. This document, which lives on one machine and one machine only. The fragmentation isn't accidental. I think I've been using the inconvenience as a kind of gate — if I can't be bothered to sit down at the desk, I probably don't need to write. The friction is the feature.