Jake LaCaze

This morning I decided to take a bit of a focused deep dive into Obsidian. I started by expanding upon something simple and elaborating on it.

The focus of this morning’s deep dive was a note titled “Books Read”, which is just what it sounds like: books I’ve read since starting the note. Shortly after subscribing to micro.blog, I started keeping a list of books I’ve read on my own site. But after spending an hour or so working on this note, I can see where Obsidian can benefit such tracking.

Below is a screenshot of my “Books Read” note to give an idea of what I’m working with.

The colorful Dracula theme may be distracting, so I’d like to point out that the text in orange signifies an internal link. Links for book titles point to my thoughts on the book. (I hesitate to call them reviews because they’re hardly of that quality, but in my defense, I’m filling most of these in weeks after having completed the titles.)

You may also notice that some authors have links, and as you would expect, that means I have created my own entries for them.

Let’s take a dive into Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion. And let’s focus on the concept of how this relates to Obsidian rather than the content (or lack thereof) of my notes going forward.

Below is what we see when we check out Play It as It Lays.

In this quick note, you can already see a couple links starting to build, one to the author herself, Joan Didion, and another writer she influenced, being Bret Easton Ellis.

Then, if we click on Joan Didion…

We’re starting to see more links building. One link goes from Didion to Ernest Hemingway and another to Bret Easton Ellis. If I were someone trying to discover my literary influences, this would be big. I can see a path being created and a bit of an identity forming as a result.

Just for craps and giggles, here’s the graph resulting from my “Books Read” note.

“Books Read” is in the center, and you can see all of the titles I’ve read spoking off that center, but on one side, you can see some funky links between nodes. This is hardly impressive in its current form, but I can see how this all starts to build on itself. It’s important to remember that this is not a knowledge base for the world. This is your knowledge base, so it’s most important to see how these items link for you.

And finally, for more craps and giggles, here’s a screenshot of my entire graph in Obsidian.

When you're young, you can't help making fun of your elders' inflexibility. You know you used to snicker when you'd hear the old men say stuff like:

You can't mix country music and rock 'n' roll. You can't do it! It just ain't right!

You go about your life in your youthful smug way until you wake up one day and realize you're now that old person. Or, at best, you're becoming that old person. And this is where I find myself at 36 years of age, constantly reminded every single day that I am set in my ways, no matter how unintentionally that happened.

And here I am, giving Obsidian, something which seems to go against everything I know, a shot. And the transition ain't the smoothest.

What is Obsidian

Obsidian touts itself as a second brain.

From their website:

The human brain is non-linear: we jump from idea to idea, all the time. Your second brain should work the same.

Your second brain is comprised of a collection of notes in Markdown, which I consider one of my favorite inventions of all time--I wish I were joking about that.

One of the foundations of Obsidian is linking your posts together. These links help you to jump between files (thoughts). Also, once you've built up some links, you can check out the graph view and get a visual of how your thoughts link together. Let's be honest: The visual is why we're really here. We're doing this for the 'gram.

Example of a graph view, from Obsidian's website

What I've tried so far

I've imported my old notes, consisting mostly of blog posts, vignettes, short stories, and notes for a couple novels. I've also started a journal and am in the process of establishing a template for daily entries.

My daily journal template--sure to change

I'm also trying to let go of using folders for organization and instead rely almost solely on links, with some exceptions: So far I have folders for my journal entries, attachments, and templates. There's no reason I can't use more folders, as the option is a core feature of Obsidian, but I figure that doing so will hold me back from embracing this new-to-me system.

My concerns

Can I find a way for Obsidian to benefit me, primarily as a writer? I read an article from a writer who said she breaks her writing into three stages in Obsidian:

1. Research
2. Outline
3. Drafts

You may already do this, but chances are that your three stages aren't literally linked together, making for easy shifting between the steps. She also goes on to talk about how she can open multiple notes at the same time and put her research or outline note next to her draft note.

Another concern: Am I wasting time on something else on the internet that looks shiny and exciting but will ultimately be something that I don't need? There's always a chance of that, but I'll never know if I don't check it out for myself.

And, perhaps most importantly, as I touched on in the introduction of this post, I am realizing that I am set in certain ways, which makes me cringe to say or type. I don't have the brain juice to switch gears, nor do I have the time, so while I'm worried that this new way of doing things may not be for me, I also have to acknowledge that I simply may not be able to embrace something that could benefit me.

Where I'm hopeful

In theory, linking between notes can make journaling useful for me. I've tried journaling in various forms over the years, and nothing has stuck. But, maybe I can have some barebones journal entries with links to other things that materialize from those entries, so while the entries themselves may be uninspiring, perhaps I can literally see (via the graph view) how those entries affect other aspects of my life.

As of right now, Obsidian does not have mobile apps, though they are reportedly in development, so I am hoping that the apps will be up to the standards of the desktop app. Until the mobile apps are released, I can rely on iA writer for editing notes on the go.

Follow along

Someone on micro.blog recently made the point that more people should share their journeys with new software and methods because it gives others hope and the opportunity to learn along with you, so I'm going to give it a shot. I plan on posting more related posts under the category "Adventures in Obsidian".

I hopped onto micro.blog earlier this year. I forget exactly when because this is, I believe, the third time I’ve given the platform a shot, and I’m too lazy to look up the exact date. In the past, I simply couldn’t find a place for micro.blog in my digital life, but the service made sense once I turned my back yet again on Twitter. But that doesn’t mean that my adoption has been seamless. It hasn’t been all rainbows and unicorn farts. Once I had found a place for micro.blog, I then struggled to find my limitations for the service. Did I want it to be only a microblog? Did I want to include long-form blog posts too? What about my short stories? For someone who prefers to compartmentalize, this amounted to a blogging existential nightmare.

I’ve realized that much of my confusion stemmed from my insistence of holding onto my old blog posts, ones that started in 2018 when I made an effort to regularly write again. Looking through these old posts, I realized just how much they centered on grief, from the losses of my mother, father, and stepfather all so close together. As if that weren’t enough, I also had to contend with the loss of myself, the loss of a certain innocence, a certain ignorance. Existential AF, y’all.

Those old posts are precious to me in a way that only I could fully appreciate. Writing has always been my way of making sense of the world around me, so I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that these old posts helped me to make sense of my experience and that the world made less sense when I wasn’t writing. Those old posts brought understanding. They brought tears. But they also brought peace.

But I’ve realized over the last couple days that I don’t need to bring those posts with me anymore. I don’t need to hold onto them. I am not done with my grief. But I’m done with my grief’s being my primary concern. It’s time to move on and forward, because as my losses have taught me, however long I have, it won’t be nearly long enough.

Grief is something that stays with you. It never really leaves and it resurfaces at times and in ways you could never predict. And I think that’s how those old posts will be: The lessons and revelations will pop up, even if I’m unaware.

It hasn’t been so easy for me to embrace some of the philosophy behind micro.blog. Perhaps because I’m approaching middle age, I found myself digging my heels in and wanting to keep a wall between a microblog and a traditional blog. I had a hard time getting behind Manton’s claim that you’re creating a blog even while microblogging. But as I spend more time on the platform, I’m coming around to the idea.

I appreciate that micro.blog has the flexibility of hosting microposts and longer posts together. I still want to write traditional blog posts from time to time, but they’re no longer my focus. The simple truth is that most of what I want to say doesn’t require much thought; it’s a blip on the radar that I want to throw out into the world for whatever reason. And I want to use most of my long-form writing juice for short stories, with the hope of eventually writing a novel.

The point of this site, my vanity project, is to capture me. Not only my long-form blog posts, but a bit of everything. And holding onto those old posts that were written on other platforms with other intentions doesn’t serve me.

And so, it’s time for this old dog to learn some new tricks.

Note: I’m planning to keep the old posts around as an archive. I still have about 4 and a half years left on my five-year subscription, so maybe it’ll be a while before I take the old posts out back and cap them like Old Yeller.

For me, getting older has been a bit of a mixed bag. In some ways, life gets easier as I figure things out and learn to prioritize what truly matters. If you’re struggling with this, consider checking out Mark Manson’s book on the matter.

On the other hand, I suppose it’s only natural to long for the good old days, a time when the world made sense and we were flexible enough to adapt.

For me, one of the saddest parts about getting older is that I don’t listen to music the way I used to. I don’t listen to complete albums. I don’t obsess over the details of the production and instrumentation, the stories behind the songs. And that’s what one would expect, because I’m an adult with responsibilities, and my time is more precious than it was when I was a teenager in podunk Louisiana, using music as my escape.

But man, how I used to get high on tunes. I remember the drama of downloading songs via Napster on my home computer’s 19.2kbps dial-up connection. So many times I’d wait nearly an hour for a song to download, only to have the connection severed at the end, leaving the file incomplete and unusable. I also searched out albums on the Tower Records website and then sat in agony over the next few days–or maybe it was weeks; I’ve been spoiled so long by Amazon’s two-day deliveries that I forget what it was like before–and there was little as exciting as getting new CDs in the mail. I used to love playing a CD low while I slept, one of my favorites being My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. (Side note: I think My Bloody Valentine’s “When You Sleep” is the most interesting song to search for covers on YouTube.)

My best friend in college is the only person from my Louisiana days that I stay in frequent contact with. While we’ve both grown over the years–and so has our relationship–it all started due to music, when I complimented his t-shirt of The Cure’s Disintegration album, my favorite of all time. We soon discovered we liked many of the same bands beyond The Cure: Joy Division, Pixies, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, etc. Music wasn’t our only thing. We enjoyed many of the same movies. We played video games. We both loved Johnny’s Pizza. But I doubt we would have ever had the friendship I cherish if it weren’t for music.

Recently, someone on micro.blog–I believe it was Andrew Doran–was pushing Bandcamp as a great platform for musicians. I had used Bandcamp in the past and had just a few months before bought my first album on there, but for some reason, this post resonated with me and convinced me to dive a bit deeper, resulting in the purchase of ten more albums, the most recent being this morning’s purchase of Yawn by Bill Ryder-Jones. Jones is one of my favorite new-to-me artists of the last few years, and Yawn is persistently melancholy, making for great music to reminisce to.

I’ve spent the last few weeks listening to music I have paid for. I find I’m more likely to listen to a complete album, to experience the whole piece. Music matters more again. It inspires more again. And this practice has the added benefit of making me get more value out of my Plex server.

Perhaps paradoxically, I think having such easy access to music via streaming services like Spotify had killed the value of music for me. There’s something about going out of your way to purchase music. It’s how you show what you value. It’s an investment–of money and time–even in the click-buy-and-download of today’s internet.

To be clear, I am not saying that we should all shun such streaming services. Some people may not be able to fork over $10 or so per album. And the platforms do help artists get exposure. I likely wouldn’t have discovered artists such as Bill Ryder-Jones if it weren’t for Spotify.

But individuals don’t have to take every option they’re presented with. Sometimes there’s a certain freedom in saying no. And maybe this is one of those situations for me.

I had just started getting a hold of a routine when the pandemic came along and crapped right on my best efforts. I spent most of 2020 trying to regain some semblance of routine. I’m sure I’m hardly alone in that struggle. The good news is that the last year has given plenty of opportunity to realign my priorities.

Now, in the spring of 2021, the message feels consistent and real for America: There’s reason for optimism. The consensus seems to be that by summer, every American adult who wants the vaccine will have the opportunity to get the jab. And that actually seems to be the worst case scenario now.

Earlier this week, while stuck at a red light in the seemingly busier Dallas-Fort Worth traffic, I caught myself daydreaming about the near future. I let my guard down and started wondering what my immediate post-pandemic future looks like. I was considering the revelation of this past year and beginning to think about the new routine.

The globe won’t go back to normal by summer, as other countries won’t have access to the vaccine. But I’m excited for some sort of progress. If we can’t win the war yet, at least we can win a battle.