Rebooting: The App I Use to Expel (and Contain) Petty Thoughts

Most of my friends are familiar with Petty Jordan. He doesn’t come out much these days, and when he does it’s usually limited to cheeky jokes that get across that I’ve been slightly bruised. It wasn’t always that harmless, though—just ask my middle-school bully, Stephan.

If you never attended Catholic school, it’s a tumultuous drag where you’re lectured by teachers who would rather tell you to cut your hair and give you detention for coming to school with an iPod than help you with algebra. At the small school I attended, there was a small pool to choose your friends from. Unfortunately for the two of us, Stephan and I latched onto the same clique.

We’d never liked each other, but sixth grade was when the situation switched from slight digs to full-blown bullying. It started with mocking the amount of leg hair I had for a 12-year-old (it was a lot). Then one day at recess, he shouted a jab about my relationship with my father that went way too far. At that point, I didn’t even care about getting even—I cared about winning, and about making Stephan, in all his chuckly blockheadedness, the sludgeball for once.

I started small, targeting Stephan’s tremendous fear of bugs. I told my dad I needed a bag of toy bugs for a science project, and then I slowly dropped different bugs into my number one nemesis’s life: into his backpack, onto his shoulder, in his desk, anywhere that would make him jump and shriek in a room full of people. Today, that would be too far for me, but at the time, he wasn’t squirming enough for 12-year-old Petty Jordan. So I told Stephan it would be hilarious if he ran up to my friend from behind and tackled him in the dirt; as he approached Josh, who knew what was happening, I ran to the principal and told her to look at what Stephan was doing. After a loud whistle blow and a louder chant of “YOOOOOOO” from Mrs. Kwader, Stephan spent the next several days in the detention chair.

I turned to even more drastic pranks. One day at lunch, Stephan and I begrudgingly plopped next to each other on the last open seats at our group’s table. When he got up to go to the bathroom, I dug through his lunch box, opened up the Dole fruit cup I found as Stephan approached the table, and slowly slid it underneath him as he sat down. I’m not sure what sound he made, but it’s what I’d imagine a ghost (the "Boo!" kind, not the Haunting of Hill House kind) would sound like if it had just stubbed its toe and fallen into a pile of goo. Once he realized what had happened, he grabbed my lunch box and tossed it against the wall. Again, I get it. But I didn’t expect Mrs. Salems, our lunch monitor, to see him and give him sweeping duties. While Stephan spent his lunch hour sweeping dirt and rocks away from the eating area, I spent mine kicking those same dirt and rocks back onto the freshly swept ramada while chuckling, “Missed a spot.”

I’m almost 28 now, and treating people like I did at 12 is how you end up with no friends—or as the CEO of a company. I’m not interested in either. Still, those petty impulses aren’t totally gone, even if they no longer involve sneaking fruit cups under someone’s seat. Sometimes I still need to let out some snark. For those times, I turn to my journaling app, where my Personal Twitter lives.

The journaling app Day One is a beautifully designed way to get your thoughts out in private. It supports multiple journals, which I use for things like writing three positive affirmations a day, saving sweet texts from friends, keeping a gratitude log, and musing about my day. I have one called Personal Twitter, which acts as a brain dump for Petty Jordan. Whenever I feel like subtweeting my professional nemesis, making an unnecessary dig about an ex, telling a dumb joke that wouldn’t be funny to anyone but me, or broadcasting a snarky remark about the neighbor I have to let in every time he forgets his keys, I open up Day One and write it straight into my journal. It doesn’t give me the satisfaction of the perfect comeback, but it does get it out of my system so that I can move on with my day—if it’s that important, I can find a better way to say it.

If, unlike me, you don’t have a petty side lurking beneath the surface that needs to be tamed, journaling offers other great benefits, too. It can improve your memory, give you more perspective on everything from the mundane to the traumatic, and just make you a generally more mindful person. Last year, Hayley Phelan wrote about how journaling drastically improved her life over the course of two years, helping her relieve anxiety, sleep better, and get in touch with her real desires.

It’s true, the benefits of journaling may not be entirely tangible, but I can say it has made my life notably better. When I was exiting an abusive relationship, I started using journaling to collect my thoughts whenever I felt my anxiety start to creep up and overwhelm me. Since then, I’ve been able to catch myself when I’m getting too into my own head. I’m starting to remember more of what happens throughout my day, and I’m more able to focus on the good things that happen throughout, rather than the dingus who cut me off and left my life three seconds later.

A previous version of this essay appeared in Wirecutter writer Jordan McMahon’s newsletter examining how people can use technology to take better care of themselves.