Landing

This is my Digital Garden. This is a public-facing collection of notes that I've either made or borrowed.

These are considered "working" or "Evergreen notes". I am adding to them over time, and it is in a constant state of flux, revision, and rethinking. Shamelessly stealing from inspired by #people/Andy_Matuschak. You can see his collection here: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes.

You'll see links all over the place; sometimes they are internal, to other notes in the canopy, and sometimes they are external. Click on any of them.

In my head, the narrative framework for this collection is a forest. The notes are intersecting roots and branches, weaving together and making the whole more robust. I call it The Canopy.

The canopy is a lot bigger than what is here (I have maybe 1000 or so different notes?) but this is what I feel comfortable sharing so far. Mostly I just have to get around to publishing the old ones lol. The goal is to get them all up and properly integrated.

How to get around

There is deliberately a limited amount of hierarchical structure here; this is "home" but only because it's nice to have a consistent landing page. You should think of every page as equal to every other page; some will be more interesting, some less, and that's okay.

That said, there are a few navigational aids to help find your way through the garden. You can think of them sort of like desire paths (1.e Desire paths are everywhere); they're paths that (if done correctly) organically arise out of some need.

Like some desire trails, the links sometimes point to dead ends. Either I haven't written that note yet, so I'm leaving a link for later, or I just haven't gotten around to moving that note over.

You can look at the Branch Map for a big picture of my more fleshed out/processed stuff. It isn't exhaustive, by any means, but I find it kind of cool.

Signposts

Branches and Intersections

You'll see up:: for a lot of notes. All that means is that the note you're reading is a "branch" of the pertinent up:: note. This can help you find things that are related to what you're reading now, as well as help ensure that ideas don't get lost as easily.

Sometimes you'll see X:: in a note. All that means is that the linked note is in some way "crossing" the note you're reading. It's a way to signify that these two share some sort of intersection. I don't use this as much, but it happens. I find it's helpful to firm up those links, make them a little more real.

There are also some notes that function as intersections with branching paths. The term I use for this is Trailhead, since they help you find a way in. I sort of make them on the fly as needed, but here are a few:

• th.Concepts can point you to interesting ideas I've encountered and decided to write about.
• th.Mind is a collection of stuff related to the mind and thinking.
• th.PKM has resources on theory of PKM, as well as some of my opinions on it.
• th.Art leads to various things that are artistic in nature. I make a lot of art, and experience a lot of art.
• th.Interests are more or less activities and topics in which I participate, in some way.

I haven't kept up with them as much as I'd like, so they need a little love and care (like any good trailhead). They aren't the defined ways around notes, either, just well worn paths.

UIDs

Each note has a unique identifier (UID), displayed at the top of the note (and sometimes in the inline title of a linked note). I use that for searching, ensuring that notes have unique titles, and because it gives each note a permanent address (in the same way that a business might change but remain at the same address, I can ensure that my links are less likely to break).

Practically speaking, this is useful because I often write down the ID in a physical location (like my bullet journal) and it's good to be able to have them communicate without me worrying about renaming files.

You'll also see that a lot of notes have an alphanumeric prefix (like the beginning of 4.b1b PKM cannot save you). That's taken from #people/Niklas_Luhman's "Folgezettel" (or "following note") organization for his Zettelkasten (which is kind of what this is, I talk about it a little in 20220409085155-Principles-of-Zettelkasten). Basically, it's just a way to track a note along a path. They aren't listed in order of importance, they're just ways of causing me to think of how notes can intersect.

I've recently changed how I do identifiers, so it's likely that some things will look out of place or different. All in due time.

Tags

There are various tags that I use, and they have different purposes.

Tags with underscores in front of them are structural*. That is, they are about metadata.

• _type/ tags reference what type of note the file is; is it an atom, a tiny unit of information? Is it a note, a larger unit of information designed to be read or understand something? Is it an article, a note designed to incorporate other notes to make some sort of argument or explain something?
• _status/ tags reference the, well, status of that note. Most things published here should be _status/Leafing but many are unfinished, or Budding. Occasionally there'll be something that's _status/Pruning but I hope not. You'll also sometimes find a _status/Fluid tag that means that the nature of the note changes overtime, and trying to pin it down wouldn't be useful.
• _form/ tags are probably the most abstract. You can see more about that in Symbolic processes. I'm not sure how useful it'll be for you, but 10.b Narrative devices are helpful for living and these are some of mine.

Okay, but Why?

Well, that's… A good question. I guess I'm doing this because I like it, because I think my ideas are worth sharing, and because I want accountability and meaning for all the thinking and writing that I do. I don't know why you're here, but that's okay. Stay as long (or as little) as you want.