Background
I have referred to The Quantum Garden Vault. my Personal knowledge management system, as a Digital garden for several years now and it makes sense this online presence reflects that. Originally I used the term to mean tending the noise of digital records, but have now moved towards a place for the growing of ideas and making sense of my world.
The situation as it stands today
I have been a user of Obsidian since January 2021 and prior to a year’s flirtation with Roam Research, had been a heavy user of TheBrain.1
Obsidian describes a collection of notes as a vault, and my vault is a mix of personal and public writing. It contains truly personal notes and information (journal entries, remembrances of past events), and reference material. In September 2023, I moved my blog from Wordpress to Quartz and that has allowed me to greatly expand what is shared publicly.
I can’t share everything because of the personal/public nature of some of the information, nor can I be wasting time converting from one format to another. Past interactions have taught me there is value in sharing my knowledge on the web, but it can be hard when there are multiple audiences involved.
I now have a working system where I am able to create notes within Obsidian and publish to the web via Quartz. A major point of friction is then removed, that of converting from one format to another. It’s write-once, publish once. Though, as digital gardening suggests, that is more write-many, publish many.
My thinking has evolved to green thumb level
A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden perturbed me when I read it. The Sun came out and I could see different ways to approach my digital gardening.
The concept of “publishing” to the web had bound me in ways I hadn’t realised. Something like a blog post would be “published” on a date, never to change again apart from any corrections I may need to do. The status was always considered done, and the date was the date.
The impact of this was a split in my notes. A note that I may make about the game A Plague Tale: Innocence would look very different if it was for me compared to a target blog reading audience. Rather than generate ideas and explore, I felt the need to have something already finished.
Letting go of “published” and all that comes with it frees me to write what I’m thinking, knowing that I can change it later if I need to, and I won’t get in trouble for it.
“Gardens present information in a richly linked landscape that grows slowly over time…. The garden helps us move away from time-bound streams and into contextual knowledge spaces.2
In contrast, this note is being written as I think and I fully expect it to change as I firm up the design of The Quantum Garden Website.
I feel liberated in not having to think about time anymore.
But it can’t be that easy
It’s not. I have to rethink how existing content is presented and work my way through the necessary changes.
The joy and wonder are in now understanding, that’s perfectly ok. I don’t have to get the garden website perfect the first time. It never will be and like a garden the visual aspect will change over time. Both plants (notes) and structure (landscaping) are all up for grabs to maximise the benefit of the knowledge shared.
Blogging and RSS feeds
I have begun and unbegun blogging several times. My garden in its current form is easily shared via RSS.
Changing Obsidian’s structure
My Obsidian Vault’s internal structure does not need to change too much. Anything that is published here sits within a Public folder off the root. This is the only folder that Quartz considers when publishing and eliminates the risk of my suddenly publishing 30 years of private journal entries.
Books and movies
I asked myself why am I even recording all this. It’s because I don’t feel known. Someone who discovers my journals after I die could look at the list of my media consumption and somehow understand me. Quantum OS Ratings would give them perfect insight into who I was. But, of course, it wouldn’t. I’m wondering if I’d be better dumping all that overhead and simply listing my favourites and WHY.3
The design as it stands
Nothing is sacred
This is a garden. Ideas flourish and others will die. I make no promises that a note, topic or anything else will be present tomorrow if it’s there today. Letters with Jason was originally six blog posts, and RSS remains an important technology was four posts spanning 19 years. If combining content makes a better story I’ll not hesitate. Notes that are clearly no longer relevant will be updated or deleted.
Minimal site menu
Flowing from the idea that Backlinks are important the site is highly interconnected so the “standard” website menu is not required. I do have a minimal menu for starting purposes. Landing anywhere will allow easy navigation from one related note to another. And there is always search.
Individual notes with structure will show a table of contents.
Note metadata
Notes have metadata added with additional information that is useful to have beyond the content of the note itself. Current practices are in the Quantum OS Property Conventions.
I try to follow the principle that Linking is more important than categories.
Footnotes
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Known as PersonalBrain back then. ↩
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A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden, retrieved 17 September 2023. ↩
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From my emotional reaction to the sentence, we can assume I have decided that. It feels more right to do it that way but I will do so in a controlled way. ↩