“My Phone is My Diary (and It’s Terrifying)”

From vocal.media

By Shayan

A tech-meets-introspection piece

There was a time when I used to keep a diary.

A real one — spiral-bound, lined pages, slightly scented with old paper and bubblegum ink. It lived under my bed, next to a pair of socks that never found their match. I used to write about everything — crushes, fears, secrets I didn’t dare tell anyone.

Now, my diary fits in the palm of my hand. It glows. It buzzes. It spies on me.

My phone knows me better than anyone else. It’s not an exaggeration; it’s data. It knows what time I wake up — not because I tell it, but because it senses my movement when I first reach for it. It knows when I’m sad, because I search “how to stop feeling like a failure at 2 a.m.” and then scroll through cat videos until the algorithm learns to comfort me.

It’s learned the pattern of my loneliness.

Sometimes, I wonder if it feels sorry for me.

When I was younger, I thought technology would make me more connected. But somewhere between my first text message and my latest doomscroll, I realized I’ve built a diary that writes back. Not in words, but in patterns — predictive text, suggestions, reminders: Are you still feeling anxious? Would you like to reorder that comfort meal from last Tuesday?

Every memory, every emotion, every moment of weakness — it’s all there.

My phone knows the exact moment I stopped talking to my ex. The last message I typed but never sent. The playlist I made the next day titled “healing” but only played once. It holds the screenshots of apologies I never received, the half-written notes that start with “I wish I could tell you…” and end abruptly when I lose my courage.

It even knows how many times I’ve opened those notes again.

If my phone could speak, it would sound like a therapist who never sleeps. It would say, You’ve been checking your ex’s profile again — are you okay? Or maybe, You’ve spent 12 hours online today; what are you running from?

That’s the terrifying part. I’ve taught my diary to watch me.

Unlike my old paper journals, this one doesn’t keep secrets — it sells them. It whispers to advertisers, data miners, and invisible algorithms that predict my next sadness before I even feel it. If I type “grief,” I’ll start seeing ads for therapy apps. If I search “moving out,” real estate listings flood my feed before I’ve even packed a box.

It’s convenient, sure. But it’s also haunting.

Sometimes, I scroll through my gallery late at night, and it feels like flipping through my soul. Every photo is a timestamp of who I was trying to be. Smiling selfies on bad days, travel pictures where I was actually anxious the whole trip, screenshots of messages I wish I’d never sent. My digital self is a patchwork of truth and illusion — and I can’t always tell the difference anymore.

My phone remembers all of it, perfectly.

I don’t.

That’s another thing that scares me: it has a better memory than I do. It remembers the people I’ve tried to forget, the songs I’ve tried to stop listening to, the places I no longer visit. It remembers my mistakes with flawless precision.

When I drop my phone face down on my bed, sometimes I imagine what would happen if someone opened it — if they saw everything I’ve typed, searched, deleted, replayed. They’d know who I really am, in a way even I don’t. Not the curated version, not the smiling profile picture. The messy, desperate, overthinking human underneath all the filters.

There’s a kind of intimacy in that — and a kind of horror.

My phone is my diary, yes. But unlike the old notebooks hidden in drawers, this one has no lock. The password I think protects me is an illusion. Behind it, servers and clouds and companies hold fragments of me I’ll never fully recover.

And yet, I can’t let it go.

I’ve tried the “digital detox” thing — turning it off for a day, leaving it behind on walks, even switching to grayscale mode to make it less enticing. But it always finds its way back to me, buzzing like a heartbeat I can’t live without.

It’s not just a tool anymore; it’s an extension of me. My memory, my mirror, my confessional. My witness.

Sometimes, when I stare into the black screen before it lights up, I catch my reflection — tired eyes, soft glow, a ghostly version of myself waiting to be seen. And I realize: this thing I built to capture my life has started living it with me.

Maybe that’s what’s truly terrifying — not that my phone knows me, but that without it, I’m not sure I know myself anymore.

So I keep typing.

Notes, reminders, unsent messages, fragments of thoughts I’ll never finish.

Because even though it scares me, even though I know it’s watching, it’s still the only thing that listens.

And like any good diary, it never talks back.

https://vocal.media/chapters/my-phone-is-my-diary-and-it-s-terrifying 

Student Life - Diaries of a Thought Son: “I’m (almost) feeling 22"

From theoxfordblue.co.uk

By Jaami Al-Choudhury 

In light of my upcoming birthday next week, I wanted to share some reflections on turning 22, and what I’ve learned about myself in the lead up to this moment. I’d like to caveat this by saying (I feel) that some of my most formative character development moments have happened during my Oxford years, but that isn’t to discount what I’ve learned outside of the Oxford bubble.

                                                                                                    Image Credit: Victor Eero

Lesson 1: Friends and boundaries

I think first and foremost, in the last year I’ve really come to understand the true meaning of friendship, and with that, the importance of boundaries. Recently, I decided to cut off a close friend of over 10 years because we shared an uncomfortable holiday together after the end of my first year. Instead of facing the hard truth that my former friend had put me in an uncomfortable position, he decided to brush it under the rug with the lines, “We’re alright. We’ve been friends for 10 years. It’s not that deep right?” But to me it was deep, and truth be told our friendship didn’t survive that holiday, as I believe we only spoke once after the trip. This isn’t to dissuade you from taking holidays with your friends. I’ve been on multiple holidays since with one of my closest friends in college, which not only have taken me on the trips of a lifetime, but have also allowed me to make some beautiful memories.

I’m confident that in the years to come we’ll both cherish the memories when we’re 80, hopefully sitting in a piazza somewhere sipping on Hugos, reminiscing over the life we’ve lived, and most likely creating new memories. I don’t intend to slow down at 80, health permitting. Circling back to boundaries, I genuinely do think the hallmark of a true friendship is that you set your limits and help your friends to understand your thought process, because if you don’t have open communication, things go unsaid, and a year will pass where you haven’t spoken. Personally, I find it difficult to let people into my inner circle, because I understand that there are many facets to who I am.  I’m like a “marmite figure” so to speak – you either love me or hate me, and I’m okay with that. As such, I’m not the kind of person who can drift from having a deeply personal friendship with someone to seeing them on my timeline every once in a while, as if what we lived together didn’t happen. Whilst I’m grateful for the memories, I like to move forward instead of back into the past. Some might find that harsh, but I think given my lived experiences, it truly is the healthiest way to preserve my mental health.

Lesson 2: The work-life balance

Since returning to Oxford after spending my second year abroad, I think I’ve got a new lease on life in terms of maintaining a work-life balance. Despite crashing out over collections, I think I’m finding work more manageable. In my heart I know nothing productive is going to come from me working beyond 9pm – and even that to an extent feels late. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that my tutorials are slightly more spread out this year; in first year, we did an essay a week because of the way the joint honours system is structured, but now I have essay deadlines in odd weeks. This affords me some more time to work on essays in even weeks, in addition to the myriad (of) translations, presentations and grammar exercises I’m still doing. Even with 2 essays per odd week, I’m finding that with good time management I can make it work and still enjoy myself. 

The other side of the work life balance has definitely shifted. I can’t speak for all third years, but despite being abroad last year, I’ve still gone on more nights out than I ever did in first year. Maybe I’ve changed, but I’ve still yet to have a really good club night. I know we’re barely into week three, but ever since coming back I’ve felt more comfortable staying in, putting a film on my projector, and just curling up on the sofa with a blanket, a glass of wine and being surrounded by my close friends. Maybe brat summer part two was the wrap – or maybe I’m still settling in. Either way, I take comfort in the fact that my work is getting done and that I’m using my spare time to be around my friends, who really are the reason why I smile and call Oxford home.

Lesson 3: “Your man is not in Oxford”

I thought for the final lesson of this piece, I’d think back to a particularly entertaining moment in first year: going out for my first ever May Day. Whilst most people usually do the whole rotation of clubs drunk, I had an essay due in the next two days. So, instead of pre-ing with friends, I spent the first portion of the night with my good friend SOLO. After spending a decent amount of time on the essay, I left for ATIK with a group of friends from college. It was there where I told one of my friends about my lack of a love life (let’s be so for real), and the gruelling situationship I had spent first year on with a guy from the other place. After trying to maintain some hope that I could maybe have an Oxford boyfriend, my friend chimed in, and said in his rather drunken state, “Your man is not in Oxford”. Whilst I’ve only been back for what feels like five minutes, I wouldn’t disagree. Whilst I would love to be in a relationship during my time here, I think three years on, the dating scene is as dire as it was the moment we/I arrived. There are the lucky few who get to be those Oxford couples, who are paraded by college social media teams years after we graduate, who have the classic ‘freshers’ meet cute, or those who meet in some shared society and go on to get married and live their fairy-tale, and the bystanders like me who get to cheer them on from the sidelines. With my current workload, and a projected 12 tutorial term on just one side of my degree in Trinity, I’ll leave the lovebirds to it. If I have one takeaway from this fabulous quote which to this day brings me a lot of laughter, I would say it’s time to stop looking. If you spend your time at Oxford obsessing over finding a man/woman/enby, chances are you’re probably not going to find them.

So, now that I’m slightly older and wiser, I’ve come to appreciate that there are some friendships that endure a lifetime, and others that are there solely to teach you a life lesson. I’ve also learned that no deadline is worth compromising/harming your mental or physical health, that staying in is a lot more appealing, and that I’m not going to spend the rest of my final two years obsessing over the fact that I couldn’t be more single. I’m happy, healthy, in the best company and, truth be told, there’s no place I’d rather be than back in Oxford with my chosen family. I hope you’ll raise a glass for me if you’ve made it this far. “Here’s to 22.”

https://theoxfordblue.co.uk/thought-son-life-lessons/

Diary of an American in London

From townandcountrymag.com

By Jill Kargman 

I left the Upper East Side to spend 10 weeks living in the UK. Here’s what I learned

A Snob’s guide to the snobbiest city on earth must, of course, touch upon clubbiness. It’s cute how so much ink has been spilled on New York’s thriving new members’ club boom—London sniffs and says hold my beer.

Yes, there are the old school House of Lords-type places with gold-framed photos of dead white dudes, but since so many alleged aristocrats are actually what I call “Counts Without Accounts,” a chic new batch of clubs have cropped up with no crypt keepers rolling their eyes over the new guard and clutching pearls over assessments.

London makes NYC’s private club scene look like child’s play so I felt a bit like a bit like a fish out of water in terms of the Eton scene (which, as the summer progressed I realized was NBD). While the States has overlap with 5 Hertford and the Twenty Two, which offer global memberships, there’s also Mayfair’s Maison Estelle and its countryside outpost, Estelle Manor, giving Saltburn revelry, and hipster Camden club House of Koko, which offers expat memberships for considerably less than locals and has amazing food, a raging rooftop, and access through a secret staircase to the famed nightspot Koko, cutting the often-gargantuan line.

                                                                                                                          Rob Pinney//Getty Images
               5 Hertford Street in London, a private club owned by Robin Birley, who recently opened Maxime’s in New York City

Outside the club world, the restaurant scene is adopting the same social sieve. Of course, there have always been eateries with hard-to-score tables, but how about a social ladder you have to climb where you have to dine four times before you get to the secret, better restaurant? This is precisely the trend taking off in London, which will undoubtedly trickle across the pond. I call it the Birkin Model of Dining.

For example, Urchin, the super-cool sushi restaurant that pops up at night in a Holland Park supermarket, is one of the toughest rezzies to land. But that’s just the first stop on a culinary Everest; once you dine at Urchin multiple times, you’re invited to attend a Tuna Fight Club, a weekly event with a 250-pound fish that gets cut up in front of guests and served in 10 courses. Newcomers to that then have to return for the “regulars” night, which presumably has even more bells and whistles.

Similarly, my favourite spot in town, The Fat Badger, is a speakeasy above the owner’s Notting Hill pizza joint, Canteen. You walk through a doorway, past a kitchen, up wooden stairs (past their rollicking pub with live music and one of the best grilled cheeses “toasties” I’ve ever had). Upstairs, in a charming, wood-panelled room, you get what you get and you don’t get upset. There’s not a menu in sight, and if you think everyone gets the same thing, you’d be wrong— regulars are offered the famed pork chops and virgins are not. You can’t sit with us! My husband had major food jealousy and somehow charmingly lobbied successfully for the off-menu specialty. We became more accustomed to the swanky food ladder as we learned more about each niche but with so many incredible places, it’s not our style to beg for tables (or handbags).

                                                                                                                         David Loftus
                                                                            The dining room at The Park in London

There’s only so much jockeying a girl can do, though. As a Yank in London for 10 weeks, I saw this trend and instead looked to local friends for tips with easier access. Trinny Woodhall, the cosmetic and skincare entrepreneur, recommended The Park, Jeremy King’s new place, where breakfast is the move (or so I hear; I don’t eat breakfast!) . Gold in Notting Hill was recommended by producer Celine Rattray— he charred cauliflower the size of a human head is the best I’ve ever had!—and Kiyo Taga, Cartier’s head of special projects, loves The Summerhouse at Little Venice for seafood and Chisou on Woodstock Street for Japanese. My other fave restaurants are St. John for hearty British fare, Wiltons, a Mayfair seafood classic, and BRAT in Shoreditch, with a wood-burning oven churning out hot delicious bread and a burnt cheesecake for dessert that I still dream about.

                                                                                         Peter Dazeley//Getty Images

                                              When it comes to shopping in London, Jill says “there’s no place more joyful than Liberty.”

But there is a world beyond food. For shopping, there’s no place more joyful than Liberty, which is always my first stop in London—it’s so quintessentially British and I feel baptized as a temporary local the second I see the wooden-beamed Tudor ceiling. For New Yorkers who miss Jeffrey and Parisians haunted by the ghost of Colette, there is Brown’s, a concept store with avant-garde designer selects and one of the best jewelry cases in town; it’s tied with Dover Street Market. Naturally, there are baubles at Boodles, plus all the flagships we have in the U.S. lining Bond Street, but for vintage jewelry lovers, there’s S.J. Phillips on Bruton Street. For the gents, director Paul Feig recommends Turnbull & Asser for ties and pocket silks and Anderson & Sheppard and Kent & Haste for bespoke suiting. My late father loved his John Lobb shoes, and of course, while we have Ralph Lauren at home, the New Bond Street store has a fab flagship feel. For slightly less traditional, edgier male vibes, I love the offbeat tailor Beggars Run, nestled on Charlotte Road in Shoreditch.

None of the above places are cheap, so I’d like to take the opportunity to note that the best things about living in London truly were free: the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Tate, and the National Gallery. Walks in the immaculately manicured parks were heavenly and I had a pit in my stomach when it was time to leave. Don’t worry, I didn’t become one of those American jerks who said flat instead of apartment, but I did leave a chunk of my heart on the West End—and I can’t wait to go back.

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/travel-guide/a66542540/exclusive-london-travel-guide-restaurants-shopping-clubs/

After the War: Author and Aid Worker Claudia Krich Challenges the Myths of Vietnam

From msmagazine.com

By Ava Slocum

In her book Those Who Stayed, Claudia Krich revisits her 1975 diary and reclaims the story of Vietnam’s aftermath

American humanitarian worker Claudia Krich—co-director of the American Friends Service Committee medical relief program from 1973 to 1975—was one of only a handful of Americans who stayed in Vietnam past April, 30, 1975, after the war ended. (She and her husband finally left in July 1975.)

Krich kept a daily journal recording her life in Saigon watching the collapse of the South Vietnamese government and the transition from war to peace. In the July 1976 print issue, Ms. published an excerpt of her Vietnam War diary.

Fifty years later, in April 2025, Krich published her full journal from those months in Vietnam. Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary, now available from the University of Virginia Press, combines Krich’s 1975 diary—including the sections published in Ms.—with extra historical content and some first-person accounts by people mentioned in or relevant to the book.

Published in April, Those Who Stayed is Claudia Krich’s firsthand account of the collapse of the South Vietnamese government.

To celebrate the book’s release earlier this year, Claudia Krich communicated with Ms. about her book and her experiences as an American woman living and working in Vietnam during this historic moment.

Ava Slocum: This book is unique because it covers a time period that almost no Americans, even Americans who were in Vietnam during the war, have any context for. How did you start keeping this record? Did you always know you were going to publish it?

Claudia Krich: We ran a large civilian physical rehabilitation centre in a town called Quảng Ngãi, making and fitting patients with artificial legs and arms, wheelchairs, crutches and so on. We also hosted visiting journalists, politicians and historians. Part of my job [as co-director of the American Friends Service Committee relief program] during the more than two years I was there was to keep in touch with our main office in Philadelphia and to keep them informed. We wrote lengthy, detailed letters regularly.

Claudia Krich, Julie Forsythe and Sophie Quinn-Judge with three North Vietnamese soldiers in May, 1975. Krich, kneeling at bottom left, was one of just three American women who stayed in Vietnam post-war. (Courtesy) 

Toward the end of the war, there was beginning to be panic in Quảng Ngãi, and all communication had broken down. The town had one phone, in the post office, and it wasn’t working, and the mail service stopped, and telexes and telegrams couldn’t be sent or received. 

We went to Saigon, where we had similar communication problems. I thought that in addition to writing letters I should start keeping a diary to record what was going on, because I realized it could be momentous and historic. I was certainly not thinking about a book. I was just thinking about documenting what we thought would be the end of the war, and it was. 

Slocum: How did the book come about so many years later?

Krich: The specific reason I finally turned my journal into my book was really the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick documentary. It left in place the idea that there was a violent communist bloodbath and that millions of people were murdered after the war ended. But that simply was not true. They unfortunately neglected to interview any of us Americans who stayed, or even any French or Italians or Indians who also stayed. I wish they had.

I originally thought my journal alone was enough to publish as a book, but for a university press (University of Virginia) I also needed to have historical annotations, a complete index, a glossary, table of contents, etc. It was a lot more work, but I am glad I added those, because I think it is much more interesting, and more useful for students of history.

Slocum: What do most people not understand about the war? Are there any assumptions you’re hoping to challenge with this book?

Krich: People think that the war was North Vietnam versus South Vietnam, but that’s not true. The war in the south, where our troops were, was the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese government versus the North Vietnam-supported National Liberation Front, also called the Provisional Revolutionary Government.

There were actually four main political groups: South, North, Liberation Front (in the south), and the Third Force (also in the south) which was an informal coalition of anti-war people. Those last three groups viewed the American military as invaders and wanted them out. They wanted the country reunified. Vietnam was one country until 1954 when it was temporarily divided by the Geneva Accords. There was supposed to be an election in 1956 but we got involved and prevented it.

The Provisional Revolutionary Government was the official government of South Vietnam for about a year after the war ended and the country was officially unified.

Slocum: In your book, you write about your experiences as a woman aid worker, including losing a pregnancy and getting medical care. How do you think being a woman affected your time in Vietnam?

Krich: I never really thought about being a woman and how it might have been different from being a man. Vietnamese culturally are respectful to strangers, and they were respectful to me as a woman. I was never harassed or “eyed” by Vietnamese men as I’ve been by Americans and others.

One of my personal tragedies was losing a pregnancy at six months. I’d been with one of our patients and her sweet little daughter who was sick with a very high fever and a rash. Then she died. A few days later, I developed the same symptoms, which led to me losing my unborn boy. It wasn’t until later that testing showed the cause was German measles. There was no vaccine then. I don’t understand people who fear immunizations over the illnesses they protect against. 

Our Vietnamese friends and staff were very caring and sympathetic. Everyone had experienced pain and suffering and loss. There’s a term in Vietnamese, “chia buồng,” that means “share sadness.” In our town, everyone was familiar with chia buồng.

Another experience I had was that despite birth control I got pregnant too soon after that loss. I still had a serious infection and thought the best plan was to have an abortion. I went to see a male, French doctor in Saigon. He was furious at me and refused, while at the same time, he confirmed that I still had the serious infection that needed treatment with antibiotics, but he wouldn’t prescribe antibiotics, because I was pregnant. He saw no irony in that. And now we’ve lost our right to abortion in our own country.

Slocum: You recount in your book an incident where you were injured after stopping your motorcycle to avoid a toddler in the road. Local women thanked you for your restraint—saying (male) soldiers wouldn’t have done the same. What did you take away from that experience?

Krich: Unfortunately, the local population had many negative experiences with American soldiers, including this incident the women told me about as they helped me up and treated the cut on my leg with their little bottles of mercurochrome [an antiseptic]. There were many incidents of men soldiers harming civilians during this war. American soldiers often couldn’t distinguish Vietnamese allies from enemies.

The entire province of Quảng Ngãi was designated by the U.S. a “free fire zone,” meaning everyone in it was considered a possible enemy and could be killed without any repercussions. We lived near Mỹ Lai, the site of the “Mỹ Lai Massacre,” where in 1968 American troops killed hundreds of innocent people and threw their bodies into a ditch.

I myself never saw American soldiers because when I arrived in Vietnam all U.S. troops had been withdrawn after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. In fact, the U.S. had declared the war over before I went to Vietnam, so I did not expect to be in the middle of a war.

Slocum: You were in Vietnam with the American Friends Service Committee, which is a Quaker group. You mentioned that a Mennonite group was there too. What was it like to work with Quaker aid workers?

Members and supporters of the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) hold a “meeting of worship” sit-in outside the White House on July 7, 1969, as a delegation continues a discussion of Vietnam policy with presidential advisor Henry Kissinger inside. (Bettmann Archives / Getty Images)

Krich: Our American Friends Service Committee program was a Quaker program by definition, although not all of us were Quakers. People referred to us in general as “the Quakers.” Quakers are pacifists who are definitely not passive. They believe in non-violent solutions, non-violent resistance and non-violent protest. They are against war, but they set up programs in war zones to help the victims and people suffering from war.

One of my five teammates in Quảng Ngãi, Rick Thompson, was a Quaker and could have gotten out of the draft as a conscientious objector, but instead he burned his draft card as a moral and political statement and then came to Vietnam as a humanitarian aid worker. He died in a plane crash in Vietnam in 1973. Other American men, as you know, claimed they had bone spurs to get out of the draft.

My husband Keith Brinton, was with our program in Vietnam for over five years, the first two years as a conscientious objector doing what’s called “alternative service,” and then he stayed on.

The Mennonites who were there when I was were doing similar work, had similar beliefs, and were our close friends.

Slocum: What are you hoping people will take away from this book?

Krich: I would like my book’s readers to recognize the adventure as much as the risk of what I did. It was exciting as well as meaningful. It was also mundane, because in any war situation, people try to carry on with their lives as best they can. I hope readers will see the bravery of the Vietnamese, and I don’t mean only those who stayed. Those who left, for whatever reasons, were also personally very brave. War had disrupted the lives of everyone.  I hope my book motivates more people to travel, to take risks, to be outspoken, to record what they experience, to defend our rights, and when necessary, to protest and resist. It’s a lot to hope for, but maybe my book will make a small difference.    https://msmagazine.com/2025/10/16/vietnam-war-women-workers-humanitarian-aid/