Who writes here

My name is Mamoun ElAlaoui. I write this site, and I build the two apps it talks about.

There is a box in my hallway. It turned up on a Thursday, I pushed it against the wall on my way in, and it is still there. I know what to do with it: open it, put the contents away, flatten the cardboard. I have known since the first day.

What is missing isn’t the information. It’s the moment the movement starts. Between knowing and doing there is a step, for me, that I have never seen on a task list. One more app doesn’t get me down that step — it just adds a line next to the box.

A friend wrote to me in February. I answered him that same evening, in my head, at length and in detail, and I never typed a word of it. By June, answering had become impossible: I would have had to account for four months. So I sent nothing.

It isn’t that I care any less about him. It’s the exact opposite, and that is what makes it hard to say out loud.

I have tried notebooks, shared boards, phone alarms, and three task apps I gave up on one after the other. Every one of them assumed the problem was not knowing what to do. None of them went anywhere near the step.

Cocon and Orbite come from those two places: what comes through the front door, and the people I have stopped writing to. I’m not building them for a market — I’m building them because the version I would want to use doesn’t exist.

I’m on my own with this. It means it’s slow, and it means the person writing these lines is the one writing the code. When an app launches, the email that tells you so will come from me, and you’ll be able to reply to it.