I Forgot Almost Everything About a Trip I Took to See My Best Friend

My Foggy Trip

A few years ago I flew out to California for a week to visit one of my best friends. We had a blast - hikes, incredible food, random adventures around the city.

Then a few years later, we’re on the phone, and he goes: “Hey, remember that outdoor market where I got that ukulele?”

Nothing.

“What about the comic we saw?”

…vaguely?

I couldn’t even remember the name of the sushi place where I actually started liking sushi. (It was SUGARFISH. I had to ask him.) Whole chunks of the trip gone. Not the boring parts. The parts where we were laughing, exploring, doing stuff together.

That hit me harder than I expected. It wasn’t just “oh, I have a bad memory.” It was realizing I’d lost time with someone I really care about, and I didn’t even notice until he brought it up.

My Journaling Journey

I’m not a journaler. Never have been. But after thinking about how much I forgot, I tried out some of the popular apps out there. A bunch were great, super polished and easy to use. But for me, the goal I wanted wasn’t there. The idea of sitting down every night to write about my day has never stuck. I was more interested in automatic organization and insights on my experiences. Not too structured, no pressure to be profound.

But I did want something. A low-effort way to jot down what happened - who I saw, where I went, how I felt. It couldn’t become a chore, or else the habit would never stick.

I’ve built a lot of apps for clients over the years, like AI-powered SaaS products, internal tools, all sorts of things. This is the first time I’ve truly wanted something for myself.

So I built it.

Introducing MemPoint

MemPoint is an AI-powered journal that tries to simplify the habit-forming process and provide simple yet powerful recall features. You can write naturally and briefly - a few sentences, a paragraph, whatever - and MemPoint will extract the people, places, and moments automatically.

You can search your entries by meaning (“that hike with my friend”), and see entries by filtering on the AI-generated tags like “Griffith Park” or “SUGARFISH”. And you can literally chat with your journal to ask it things like “when did I last see my friend” and “summarize all the cool things we did together on my trip”.

How I Use it

MemPoint is still quite new. Building the first version took a few weeks, and I’ve been using it myself for a few months to test how well it works over time. I’m ready for others to try it out, and excited to hear feedback and learn how MemPoint should grow!

Here is my typical flow:

• After doing something fun or impactful, like going to see a movie or completing a personal task that I’ve been procrastinating, I’ll open up MemPoint on my phone and write a few quick sentences
• If I have a busy day, I’ll do this a few times, one minute here, two minutes there
• Otherwise, I try to write a quick entry at night before bed or when I wake up in the morning

Now after a few months, I have a really nice catalouge of my life already. I can take all the auto-extracted people or places, and think “oh yeah, that!”, then review those entries. Or I can start a chat to help answer a question someone asked me, where I should remember, but I know MemPoint does.

It’s been fun to have a place to put everything, and explain my thoughts and feelings. Something to look forward to each day.

Try It Out!

It’s live now at mempoint.app with an always free plan. If you’re someone who’s ever wished you remembered more (not in a productivity way, just in a human way), I think you’ll like it.

And if you’re an actual journaler who has opinions about what makes a great journaling app, I’d genuinely love your feedback. MemPoint is still early, and I want to build in public.

What do you wish your journal could do?