About

Two people.

The smallest possible team.

Made in Amsterdam by Meanwhile, Twan & Petur.

Read before you buy

Two PDFs
with more information

An essay on writing, and the full manual that ships with the journal.
Open them in a new tab, or save them to your machine.

What ships in the download

One file. Nothing hidden.

When you buy The Eternal Journal, checkout (handled by Lemon Squeezy) hands you a direct download link for a small .zip. You actually get the whole package twice, one set to keep, one identical set to give away. Inside each:

  • The_Eternal_Journal.html

    The application itself. A single self-contained HTML file: no dependencies, no network calls. Open it in any modern browser, choose a passphrase, and start writing. The file is not minified; you can read and inspect every line.

  • The_Eternal_Journal_-_Copy.html

    An identical, untouched second copy, byte-for-byte the same file, ready to be given to a person you like. They start their own journal with their own passphrase; yours and theirs never meet.

  • The_Eternal_Journal_Manual_dark.pdf

    The field guide, designed for screens. Dark background, warm text.
    Read it at 2 a.m. without searing your retinas.

  • The_Eternal_Journal_Manual_light.pdf

    The same guide, designed for print. Cream paper, dark ink.
    For those who still believe in paper.

  • elara_voss_journal.json

    A sample journal in the unencrypted seed format. Import it to see how entries look and feel, fictional words by no one in particular, safe to read and safe to delete.

  • A_Note_on_Sharing.pdf

    A short essay on why there are two copies, and what to do with the second one.

  • README.txt

    Plain-text orientation: what's in the package, how to open the file, how to back up your writing, and what happens if you lose your passphrase (nothing, it's gone, and that is the point).

  • LICENSE.txt

    Human-readable personal licence. Up to three of your own devices plus the one gift copy. 30-day, no-questions refund. Site licences for clinics and schools on request.

  • RELEASE_NOTES.txt

    A dated log of every release: what changed, when, and why. Boring on purpose.

  • TROUBLESHOOTING.txt

    The most common things that go wrong, and what to try first before writing to us.

  • FOR_CLINICAL_PRACTICE.txt

    A short briefing for therapists, clinicians and practice managers on how the journal is,
    and isn't, used between sessions. Skip it if you're using the journal for yourself.

  • SHA256.txt

    Cryptographic checksums of every file in this package. Run sha256sum against it to verify nothing was tampered with in transit. Most people don't need to. It's here in case you do.

The maker · Twan Janssen

An artist who learned to code
so the file would be his.

Twan Janssen (b. 1968, Nijmegen) was trained as a painter at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem and at the Ateliers Arnhem master programme. He has been making and exhibiting work since the early 1990s, solo shows at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, W139 and Torch Gallery in Amsterdam, Galleri Flach in Stockholm, and gallery and museum exhibitions in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Beijing and Xiamen.

In 2010 he was one of the founders of the fashion label YOUASME MEASYOU, receiving the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Modestipendium in 2014. Between 2016 and 2018 he taught the workshop The Chaplin Syndrome on creativity at HKU Utrecht, ArtEZ Arnhem, the Rietveld Academie and St. Joost.

As a writer he has contributed columns, interviews and essays to W.O.T.H., Résidence and Metropolis M. As a curator with Francis Boeske he made The Future is Female at Parts Project, The Hague (2019), Boys Don't Cry at Concordia, Enschede (2020), and The Future is Female · Love Letters at Coda Museum, Apeldoorn (2021).

With International Silence, a long-running collaboration with Johannes Verwoerd, he has built city-sized literary installations including Het Poëzie Museum (Amsterdam, 2017), Wolk and Wolk II for ProBiblio, Lijn 3 with Lieke Marsman and the Dutch Foundation for Literature, and
Alles is with Spinvis, a finalist for the ADCN Dutch Creativity Award in 2021.

The Eternal Journal began the way most of his work does, as a question that wouldn't leave: where can a person write something they never want anyone else to see? The galleries had no answer. Neither did the apps. So he wrote one, in a single HTML file, with the same care he'd give to a painting he didn't intend to sell.

The other half · Petur

The second pair of eyes.

Petur is the other founder of Meanwhile VoF. More about him soon.

The company · Meanwhile VoF

A small studio, on purpose.

Meanwhile is a two-person studio based in Amsterdam, registered in the Netherlands as a vennootschap onder firma. We make a small number of careful things, software, exhibitions, installations, books, and we'd rather make one of them well than ten of them quickly.

There is no venture capital behind us, no growth target, no investor deck. The Eternal Journal is sold once, owned forever, and never asks the internet for permission. If that means it stays a small business, that's the design, not the compromise.

You can reach us at hello@offline.ltd. For the studio's other work see meanwhile.international.

Studio
Meanwhile VoF
Based in
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Founders
Twan Janssen · Petur van Sluis

The product

One file. One password.
Yours forever.

Buy Once · $24 Early Bird