2025-01-12T16:53
It's the eve of the start of my new job. I start on Monday the 13 – fitting, since I quit on Friday the 13th.
It's been quite a busy few weeks that I've been home. These previous two days were especially exhausting. Between too many errands and driving hours to see an old friend, I'm really happy to have a down day at home. Besides a notable walk and phone call, I've nearly entirely spent the whole day inside, rekindling a project I started once before but then let fall by the wayside: a zettelkasten.
For several days, I was planning on throwing out everything I had built and start anew. That is, until Brian, the person I spoke to on the phone, recommended I give Obsidian a try. Certainly, I had heard a lot of praise for the tool from a lot of tech-type people on the internet, but I had yet to give it a try – or, even really see what it was all about. After describing what I was looking for, or rather, what I didn't like in note taking tools, Brian really encouraged me to pay attention to Obsidian.
Anyway, a quick Google lead me to this video. Quickly, I got excited, texting Jason – my fellow information hoarder and dear friend – that this was likely the tool we both were looking for.
Beyond the similarities in principles I share with Artem, I was very pleased to learn that Obsidian could perfectly fit in to my existing website (and theory of personal site as hypertext).
I needed only to substitute Artem's four folders with the existing
directories of my website: src/ for new
paper slips, src/static/assets/ for files, and
templates/ at the root for new note templates. I've added
src/private/ to my gitignore, for things I don't want
publicly mirrored on the web/git. Now, with only a few hot keys in
Obsidian, I can search all of my ideas, add to them or create new ones,
and link to existing ideas.
I am shocked how compatible this tool is with static site generators! And, for how well it integrates into pandoc! And the plug-ins! The graph-view, the hot-keys, the overall polish! It's rare in tech to find a tool that perfectly fits the problem-sized hole in your life.
The biggest pain point I've had with rolling-my-own system is it's hard to edit and maintain. Who knew a software tool would come along where I could keep ownership of my thoughts, yet access them with utter ease? It really feels like having it all!