OUR STORY

As a parent with children who are quickly growing up, I was finding it difficult to recall memories of trips and experiences that we all shared without spending time digging through thousands of photos and videos on my phone. During the pandemic, I also started journaling to reflect on things and write down personal hopes, dreams, and screwups. I also tried to come up with things to be thankful for. I would find myself switching between using a physical one and a digital one. Both had their benefits and drawbacks. I tried bringing a tablet out to the beach or an outdoor deck on occasion, but it was a challenge to see the screen, and just kind of took away from the moment. Propped up with a tablet gave it more of a “work” vibe-not to mention the distractions that come with opening a device for writing down your thoughts. 

 

I knew that there had to be a better way. It was a passing thought that I tucked away and really didn’t think more about it until I was having a conversation with a group of friends. One of them casually mentioned that their family uses a shared journal that they leave out, and everyone can contribute to it. This really struck me, and I began really mulling this idea over in the coming weeks. I knew I had a break coming up, and we were going to be headed on a family trip.

 

I quickly hacked together a prototype for the notebook and took it along with us. It took some nudging, but I got everyone to contribute a bit of their thoughts and ideas about the places we went and things about the trip that struck them as interesting. As this was happening, I took the usual family photos of our trip. At night, I would spend a couple of minutes adding a few photos or videos that reflected whatever one of us had written about the day. About a month later, when we were at home hanging out, I asked everyone if they remembered having them contribute to the strange notebook that I had made.

 

They said yes, so I pulled it out and started flipping through the pages they had written, scanning each page of the notebook would bring up the pictures and videos of that day. Jaws dropped all the way around. It was at that moment I knew that I had to make this happen……The Slingshot Notebook is the result of that experiment. I now use one for my personal notes and another for the family to use. We use it for art sketches, to record places we go, concerts we attend, cooking classes, and recipes with photos of the finished product. The list goes on.

 

-Andrew V