Mikes Thoughts

an aside

Somewhere along the line I believed I could write terribly complex and intricate notes. Perhaps on reviews of books. Captures of articles. A lengthy diatribe on some topic. Or maybe I felt somewhere in this old retired guy or likely outside was this second brain. This wonderful connection of facts and notes and little pieces or things I could then connect and find again. Connect more of and see this wonderful digital representation in obsidian. This map of how all my connections radiated out from different sunbursts in my universes.

views

Alas. No. I am not a zettlekastener or a second brain “connect and link” sort of person. I have tried. It’s just not me. It’s like tracking what I read or watch or find online. I don’t keep clippings of websites and hardly ever, in fact never, save anything for later. I have no productivity hacks and what I have figured out is I just like basically writing in two places. A markdown journal that is one big file and the blog. That’s what you get. There’s no connected life. No life OS. No linked thinking. Well maybe some because I can use wikilinks in 11ty. I just don’t too often. I enjoy writing a thing that I know doesn’t really end. But it’s blog post. It has a permalink and a date and a tag. And I send it to GitHub and then vercel claims it. I’m never really done though. It sits in IA Writer and sometimes when I’m writing I remember a previous bit of detritus. I link to it. Because I want to. Like to. I don’t need to. There is no reason other than I can.

So writing is...

Only two things. I tried once or more writing thoughts or topics like Derek Sivers calls out. It’s too much and I get tired of it all. So everything ends up in the journal. Sometimes with different headers. Other times all smashed together with no reason. The journal is just a private expression. Words are misspelled or missing. I try to do better on the blog.

But hey. I’m only human. And I’m old. So I rush sometimes to get words down. I feel this itch. This need. This release to say a thing. Find the catharsis. Let it go.

In the end two things

But I think they complement each other somehow. They are meant to give me a place for expression and overthinking. If you ask my wife I do a helluva lot of both. So the two kinda link together when I want. An idea becomes a blog post. I amplify a post in the journal. It all just works for me. What makes it best is how I feel just doing this writing. I feel good sometimes. Other times I feel shitty. I want to break it on down. Say it some more. But the words run out. So I just wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Ok. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll just wait and see.