What is this?

#digitalgarden

This is my "digital garden". It's sort of a blog, sort of a personal wiki. It's a place for me to comment on media I've consumed, share about my interests and personal projects, and document my viewpoints or anything else I want to share with the world.

What inspired this?

I've had the idea of writing in a blog format for a while -- see My Past Self Telling Me To Start a Blog. Idea blossomed into reality after I watched a video^[1] which introduced the idea of a digital garden. I then read more about the concept in this article.

What directly appealed to me about the concept of a "digital garden" is that it's not a blog with an underlying purpose like promoting a product or gaining ad revenue. Instead, it's just a way for someone to express themselves to the world.

Even though I've read handfuls of personal blogs before, I never connected the dots that it's something that just anyone could do. It seemed like you have to have a really strong and cohesive message or goal to put out there if you're going to be one of those people who starts a blog.

But it's a garden, not a farm. You plant some seeds and tend to the plants as they grow. Anyone can do it. Things don't have to be super polished. You can write a full-blown article about a topic you're interested in, or just a couple bullet points about an idea you recently had.

What makes it a digital garden and not a blog?

Maybe it's both?

But a digital garden has an emphasis on a few things:

• Posts don't have to be perfectly polished - they can be incomplete or in-progress at any given moment
• Posts aren't viewed as untouchable pieces of work - they can be changed and updated over time
• Posts aren't organized chronologically like in a typical blog. The preferred method of navigation is through categories or tags, or through backlinks from posts to posts.

This article goes into more detail about some of these points, and is worth a read if you're interested.

What do I hope for a reader to get out of this site?

Perhaps:

• Be entertained
• Discover new resources, ideas, interests, or concepts
• Understand me better and have a glimpse into how my mind works

What do I hope for myself to get out of this site?

See Reasons to Write (Here)

How did I make this site?

I use a text editor called Obsidian, which makes it easy to have a hierarchy of many interconnected notes, and publish to Github Pages.

Also see Obsidian Setup.

Who in the world do I think is going to read this?

Perhaps friends or family I share it with. But also over time, random people from the World Wide Web. At some point, I'd like to add it to the Kagi Small Web feed.

Even if my audience is extremely tiny, I still feel motivated to write here. It's a long-term project representing myself.