Backfill

What it does

Most diaries are written as things happen. Backfill is for the other direction: the summer of ’95 or ’96, the teacher whose name is almost there, the trip you can only half place. You put down what you remember, as loosely as you remember it, and slowly piece together a working copy of your past.

• Dates the way you remember them. Drag a strip to a rough year (or type it), add a season or a month only if you know it, and say how sure you are: give or take a few weeks, or five years.
• A timeline of blurs. Each memory is drawn as wide as your uncertainty. Things that went on for a while, like a summer job or a year away, are solid lines with blurry ends.
• People with @. Type @grandpa and he becomes someone you can find again. Tap a name for their whole story, oldest first.
• Gaps that wait. Empty years show up with how old you were. Tap one for a question, if you want one. Stories from before you were born fit too.
• Around the same time. Reading a memory shows the others that overlap it, which is often how a date firms up. When it does, the blur tightens.
• Photos, and ways to pass it on. Add a few photos to a memory, share one with a sibling, or make a family copy: a plain page of everything that anyone can open and print.