the pen begins again!

wednesday, december 21st, 2022.

I adore writing, but doing it in public is a challenge. But— one I'd like to overcome.

I stumbled upon Tom MacWright's post, How to blog, and it inspired me to try again.

Lately, I've been wrestling with how to cultivate my digital garden. Do I want it to grow like a mind-map? A graph of disparate topics? A blog? I considered many tools to present this information. I tried Zim and Joplin. Zim was very pleasant to use, but imagining myself tooling it to update my website seemed like giving myself busy work. Obsidian, Notion, and other proprietary tools don't particularly interest me.

MacWright's post made me realize that I was wringing my hands over the tools more than just... writing. So I think I'll stick with vimwiki for now and focus on writing.

I have a shoebox full of old Moleskine pocket notebooks that I've used over the last two decades. Most are half-filled. My journals, which are the full-sized variety of Moleskine notebooks, are packed to the brim. Still, it's a walk down memory lane anytime I look through those little pocket notebooks. Oh, what interesting problems my 20-something self had to solve!

I picked up a few more of the little pocket notebooks at lunch today and I think I'll keep my ephemeral notes in them like I used to. Shopping lists, sequence diagrams— whatever needs to be remembered for a day or two! They're incredibly convenient to keep in my back pocket. MacWright also seems to have a penchant for taking handwritten notes in a similar fashion.

Back to picking up my digital pen again— I don't intend this "writing" section of my garden to be updated with any sort of regularity. Keeping a schedule makes me anxious! I don't want to fill up my garden with fluff just because I haven't written this week. That's what my paper journal is for!

I suppose that's all for now! Until next time, be well!