WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR MEMORIES?

Many of us make lists every day—but usually the practical kind: grocery lists, to-do lists, reminders we immediately forget once they're checked off. Or the bite-sized “listicles” that flood the internet (“10 Signs You’re Secretly Becoming Your Mother”).

But autobiographical list-making is something entirely different.

Making lists about your life is a way to rediscover forgotten memories, preserve stories, spark creative projects, map dreams, and keep track of the books, films, music, people, and experiences that shaped who you are. A list becomes a kind of external memory bank—a filing cabinet for your life. Once it’s written down, it doesn’t disappear.

If I asked you to list objects inside your childhood home or every place you’ve ever lived, memories would begin surfacing—tiny details you didn’t realize you still carried. That collection of memories? That’s your Listography.

A list called Songs That Remind Me of Loves From the Past might unlock memories the way a photograph can—sometimes even more powerfully. I can’t make a list about favorite childhood games without remembering nervously tapping white ice cubes out of Don’t Break the Ice, or my neighbor’s dad leading Simon Says in the yard on the Fourth of July.

While to-do lists push us forward, other lists help us hold on.

I’ve made lists of favorite memories with my mother. Lists of stories she told me. Lists of things we said and did during our final months together. A few weeks before losing her to cancer, she said to me:

"I am really going to miss eating a piece of toast."

That small moment remains with me like a gift.

Lists can preserve people. They can preserve seasons of life. They can cultivate gratitude. Things I Love. Favorite Things to Smell. Days I Would Relive Again. Even a simple list can become a time capsule.

Not everyone wants to keep a journal. Not everyone wants to write a memoir.

So I created my journals—and Listography.com—to make memory-keeping feel easier, lighter, sweeter. Small prompts. Curated topics. Tiny doorways back into your own life.

Over the years, I’ve rediscovered countless forgotten memories through lists—and slowly built something unexpected: a map of my life on earth.

My hope is to inspire new ways of collecting your memories, honoring your stories, and preserving all the strange, beautiful details that make up a life—

—including a really good piece of toast.

Now go make some lists.