Actually, this makes it 203, but who’s counting?
I’ve reached a 200-post milestone that didn’t even exist when I started putting this Digital Garden, or personal wiki, together. I had no idea how many posts I would end up creating, but here we are, so I thought I’d write this little retrospective.
When I started, I thought I might find the whole process difficult. Thinking of things to write about, turning those thoughts into something readable, then finding the confidence to publish them. Instead, the freedom of having a Digital Garden has made it surprisingly easy.
Ideas for posts and notes come from all over the place. It might be bringing together research I already had about my great-grandfather, Herbert Henry Scaife, or looking into a long-gone brewery near where I now live.
Sometimes it’s about the strange sayings and television quotes that have worked their way into our everyday lives, such as The Lines That Stuck. Sometimes it’s documenting a journey, whether that’s our possible move to Spain or keeping a record of my Pinter brewing times.
Then there are the silly little notes about things I don’t want to forget.
The content has come from lots of different places, and I love the variety of things that pass through our minds every day. I’m just happy that I’ve now got somewhere to capture some of them.
I used to keep many of my notes in Google Keep, but putting them here feels much more liberating. They’re no longer hidden away in a private list that I’ll probably never look at again. They’ve become part of something bigger, connected to other thoughts and memories, and the act of writing them down properly has possibly helped me remember them a little better too.
The garden has also slowly taught me that not everything has to be perfect.
In my professional life, I don’t publish anything until I’m 110% happy with it. Every word, fact and detail has to be checked, tweaked and checked again. That approach has its place, particularly at work, but it can also stop you from putting anything out at all.
This Digital Garden has reminded me that sometimes it’s better to just put something live. A small idea can begin as a seed, develop into a sprout, then eventually become a flower: a fully formed post that probably doesn’t need much more tweaking.
Or perhaps it never grows beyond being a seed. That’s fine too.
I also think this Digital Garden could become one of the most important things I leave behind. My children aren’t particularly interested in it right now, and I don’t blame them, but perhaps one day, when I’m long gone, they’ll start wondering what I did, what I cared about and what went through my head.
Well, kids, it’s all here.
I think that idea of leaving something behind has become one of the main reasons I want to keep writing. So, 203 posts in, there’s plenty more still to come.
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