zettel/obsidian process updates

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Wanted to provide an update on my current writing / Zettelkasten workflow (Obsidian + Analogue) list as it currently stands in this, the era of the Mac Mini; maybe you'll find something useful in it.

Zettel

...  or at least my ANALOG (I do not use Obsidian as a zettelkasten system – though I do transfer cards to Obsidian on a project basis – for the purposes I'm about to lay out) version of it: In our six months together, I've come to think of the ZK as less a repository for all notes and more of an index of the notebooks/journals and books that populate my library (appropriate, given that it rests inside an antique library card catlog). While I use tags, I rarely link notes up – but I am an inveterate highlighter, with each type of note – from my notebooks, from a book – fiction and non- – and "used" highlighted with a corresponding color in both index card and in book/notebook. Also, I rarely include a full note on a card: it's mostly a direction to a particular page in a particular notebook (Volume 27, currently) or a duly marked and bracketed book.

While the copious notecard-taking has dwindled, it's still useful, and, while I don't often reference it, the creation of handwritten cards, both from notebooks and from books, is the best retention tool I've come up with. Exceedingly useful though still – I will reiterate here as I have done in the past – not for everyone.

Obsidian

I've fallen more in love with it since switching over to the Mini: SO NICE to write in and work with. Dig the hell out of foldable headings: huge help with focus, especially as my drafts are documents assembled from different pieces (fragments and shards).

Started using their Daily Notes feature as a process of processing workhour notebook scribbles, as a reference for the next chunk of work, and as a record of music I've listened to for returning EarBliss features here. While I'm trying to stick with writing in the notebook first and following my therapist's method of scribbling during a session then pausing every 15 minutes by saying "let's type this up," I do find the frictionless capture exceedingly useful (especially when paired with my "New Zettelkasten note" hotkey which sends fragments and shards right to my inbox); handwritten notes more for processing than capture? Starting to lean that way.

Oh, right: the ability to create templates and easily insert them is spectacular. I have one for interviews, for all sorts of things - and they've become absolutely essential. Still a lot of work in migration, but I know it will be worth it.

Both the ZK and Obsidian are, nonhyperpolically, transformative. (If you've got any questions, shoot me an email.)

defragmentations

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Returning, I think, to a once-daily (with exceptions made for new work or announcements) posting regimen here: I like the slowness (slower processing, slower thinking, slower process) of it – and the feeling of breath not being wasted (or, rather, of breath wasted in something of a semi-conscious way that lends itself to craft improvement / processing of processing) though I can't discount the possibility that I'm in another of those "burn down everything and rebuild again" modes without actually burning down anything but with plenty of rebuilding – a controlled dis-assembly, perhaps, like when Amish neighbors tear down an old house, plank by plank, to build a newer version of the same house behind it, an occurrence which never ceases to fascinate.

This is my new house. Same as the old house. But a different house.

Maybe I'm considering this because I don't want to be online as much, don't want to be scavenging so much. All I do know is that a change is needed... especially as I get busier and more cognizant of my diminishing time in what probably should count as a midlife crisis, in a way (as they say in the crosswords). All that midlife not-knowing aside, there's some form of unsettling and I'm taking every step I can think of to defragment my brain so I can think of more stuff.

(Also, I want to bring back EarBliss and Newsletter Sunday as journal features; publishing these via the Mac Mini is the best way to do it.)

I also want – in spite of an insane week ahead – to spread out my workday: I'm tired of jamming everything I want to do into four hours in the morning and feeling like shit for the rest of the day as I stare down an inability to do anything but adhere to the designs and whims of duties and people real and imagined: for me, the only way through these feelings of inadequacy is to do the work, to make efforts to push things forward – even if that forward is into the ether of indifference (career advice: be prepared to practice much dentistry, often without novocaine, in "raising awareness" of your work).

So here we are: if the newsletter is the sum of the week, let these daily convenings be the terminus of the morning and the sum of the day previous, a public collision of thoughts and scraps collected in handwritten privacy over the course of a day in the life. And so it is and so it goes.

links/20220220

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sat/20220219

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Always fascinating (and mortifying) to observe mental state when in a bout of hyperglycemia, the T1D chicken and egg being "am I feeling this way because my blood sugar is a raging mess or is my blood sugar a raging mess because I'm feeling this way?", the answer being, as ever, Yes.

Managed to get K to share in my addiction to Netflix's EVIL GENIUS: rewatched the first two episodes with her yesterday (I had started it on the rowing machine as that is my vehicle of true crime addiction; I've switched over to CRIME SCENE: THE VANISHING AT THE CECIL HOTEL), will probably wrap up the final episode this afternoon or evening.

The dogchildren have been sustained; back to work.