'Digital Garden' turned into my 'Thought Darkroom'.

I discovered diagram.website through small internet recently, and clicking through interesting links I discovered the ‘Digital Garden’ concept through Maggie Appleton’s own Digital Garden.

I already had this website going as chronological blog with the intention of making it my space but it defied the idea of a Digital Garden in its chronology focus, and the Digital Garden concept argued for more of a wiki-style information setup with interlinking posts instead of a timeline scroll. It was also conforming to the concept strongly in other ways. It is self hosted on my own server, not a part of any walled garden, it is (somewhat) self built, it uses simple markdown text files, etc.

Her article advocates for the sharing of personal knowledge and public learning rather than the finality of something like an ‘article’ or ‘blog’. For me, it is nice to let go of that idea of perfection. She also mentions the idea of posting because you might be the edge case someone else might need, and that too is liberating.

I ended up restructuring this site entirely. I divided photos and thoughts even more (though unsure if this is a good idea) I added tag functionality and better inter-linking support for other posts. I’m discovering that its an interactive way for me to see my thoughts and interests and ideas as I add older posts, which I was conflicted about adding for a bit until I realized it was kind of what I wanted all along.

Thank you Maggie and all the hypertext pioneers for paving the way and inspiring me! I can already tell this concept will be the gamechanger I needed.