Chicago, Illinois
Chicago is a city of neighborhoods spread along Lake Michigan, and everyone here carries a slightly different version of it. Yours is worth keeping, told the way you would tell it to a friend.
Try it free for 7 days. Only you can see your record. Never public or searchable.
Which bench or bend on the Lakefront Trail feels like yours, and what was on your mind there?
Chicago knows about starting fresh, and if you have ever started over, the way you think about it now is worth catching before it shifts again. Take each day's question as it comes, typed or spoken, in your own blunt or tender Chicago voice. It stays private until the people you choose receive it.
Only your own words
Nothing is written for you. Every word in your record is yours, as you gave it.
Text, never your voice or face
There is no recording and no likeness, so no one can make you seem to say anything.
Time before anyone reads
No one receives your record until at least 6 months have passed after you are gone.
Your terms, kept
You decide who receives it, and you can change your mind whenever you like.
A few minutes at a time, whenever it suits you.
A friendly question about your life, your views or the people in it. Skip any you like.
Come back to an answer, add to it, or change it. Each one keeps its date.
Name the family and/or friends who will one day receive your whole record.
Chicago, Illinois
In 1871 the Great Chicago Fire tore through the city, and the years right after became known as the Great Rebuilding. That spirit of starting fresh runs through a lot of Chicago stories, whether they began with a move from another country, another state or just another block. What brought you to Chicago, or kept you here? What did starting over look like in your own life, and what did it teach you about yourself? Those answers are yours alone to give.
The Lakefront Trail runs beside Lake Michigan from Ardmore Avenue on the north to 71st Street on the south, passing through Lincoln Park, Grant Park, Burnham Park and Jackson Park. On a warm day it fills with walkers, cyclists and people who just came to look at the water. You might have a spot along it that feels like yours, a bench or a bend in the path. Tell someone about it: what you saw there, who you were with and what was on your mind.
Ask Chicagoans where they are from and you may hear a neighborhood before you hear the city. That attachment to a few streets is its own kind of knowledge. It holds the corner store, the alley where you played, the snow that never got plowed and the summer evenings on the front steps. No two people carry the same Chicago. The version you know, and your opinions about how it has changed, will one day mean a great deal to the people you choose.
Archive Membership
Someone you named asks what you thought about your first job, and the guide finds what you wrote, word for word. It is built to quote, not to invent.
First person, only in quotes
Your words appear exactly as you wrote them, with their date.
Third person, always
Everything else the guide says is about you, never in your name.
Nothing made up
If you never spoke to a subject, the answer is Unknown.
ToldForward brings you one friendly question a day, and you can answer in a few typed or spoken sentences, in your own voice. You choose who will one day receive your record, and with Archive Membership they can ask a guide that finds your exact words, quoted and dated, and never pretends to be you.