how do you measure a life?

i have always been terrified of forgetting. i was the kind of kid who was obsessed with diaries, with trying to keep a daily record of my world, every last second. it never really stuck, it was too much work to write in every day and i was prone to giving up if i ever missed a day. these days, my fascination with recording my life has adapted into more practical channels: those that are automatic.

the data on this page is a populated by two main sources:

first, the app lifecycle, of which i've been an avid user since high school. it automatically tracks, tags, and compiles my location data into elaborate pie charts to understand how and where i spend my time, down to the minute.

next, a mark rothko 2025 calendar that i bought for sale at barnes and noble and that i manually fill in with a felt tip pen. i use the lifecycle data, my spending information, and my camera roll to fill it in, and im lenient about filling it in every few days.

together, these kinds of data illustrate my life as seen through one kind of lens, that of objective and discrete observation. but my subjective daily experience is lived on a different scale and with a different kind of texture. that texture is palpable to me looking back at it now, with everything in recent memory. between the data i can remember the moments i've lived, and it's that texture rather than the numbers themselves that give me the value.

it's inevitable that one day i will view this data the way you, as a visitor, do: with nuances eroded and just numbers left to suggest a life lived. and yet as my life moves on and i slowly forget the details, there will always be experiences that evade structure and remain uncaptured, forever slipping through the cracks.