Tabs I Have Left Open: A Digital Memoir
By Bianca Gwen Whitaker, Columnist – Post Meridiem Post
There are thirty-seven tabs open in my browser.
Not by accident. Not by forgetfulness. But by design.
Each one represents a version of myself I nearly became—a life paused at 70% scroll. I do not bookmark. I do not close. I observe. I allow them to remain suspended, like emails marked unread, not because they are urgent, but because they are emotional.
The first tab is an apartment listing in Stamford. High white ceilings. No balcony. The kind of space you rent to prove a point: that your life has edges, and they are clean.
Tab two is a page titled “How to Request a PDF of Your Medical Records Without Speaking to Anyone.” I’ve returned to it thirteen times. Not because I want the records. But because I want to know the option still exists.
Tab six is an open calendar event labeled “Possibility.” It repeats every Thursday at 7:00 p.m. It has no location.
By tab fourteen, I am halfway through a Harvard Business Review article about digital minimalism. I cannot remember if I agreed with it. I only know I never finished it.
There is a tab—number twenty-three, I believe—that contains a blank Substack draft titled “Neutrality as Strategy.” Just the title. Nothing else. It has been there for nine months.
People talk about tabs as clutter. I do not. I see them as evidence. Proof that I have considered, if not acted. That I was almost someone else. That I thought about learning Italian. Or trying Pilates. Or subscribing to The New Yorker for the digital archive alone.
My tabs are not chaotic. They are chronological. I’ve arranged them from abstraction to utility. Thought → research → pricing → abandonment.
They are not decisions. They are deferrals. Quiet ones.
When I close a tab, it is not an action—it is a burial. I do not use the “Close Others” function. I am not a monster.
This browser window is not cluttered. It is lived-in. A carefully managed ecosystem of near-versions of myself, each still gently illuminated in a waiting state.
Some people leave lights on when they leave a room. I leave tabs open when I leave a life.
End Note:
Bianca Gwen Whitaker is a columnist and the Director of Chromatic Purity at Post Meridiem Post. Her current browser session has no fewer than thirty open tabs. She intends to revisit none of them.
