i've been "creating content" online, mostly shitposting, for a majority of my life. i started on myspace toward the tail end of that platform's fall and then joined facebook during the midterm of the ubiquitous platform's rise. i joined twitter, created content on youtube, blogged on medium, ghost and wordpress. i've tried most of the alt-platforms like bluesky and mastodon, as well as some of the more niche ones like steemit. now i'm writing on obsidian, though previously i tried notion as well. i even created the crackedengineering forum! *i guess you could call me a professional poaster*, though i haven't exactly found major successes on any of these platforms. most of the reason i've been a sort of nomad across multiple platforms is that i've fought to find a style of content creation that i enjoy and that i find fulfillment from. i stuck with youtube for a while and created a ton of content, but the platform has always felt forced, i hate video editing and production and i do not at all believe the platform is healthy for society. the hustlebro culture came across my radar a while back (in that i fell hook, line and sinker for that scam for the better part of a couple years) and a certain subsection of them got *really into notetaking*. they would wax poetically and collect ad and affiliate revenue from videos on obsidian and notion systems. there were books released, apps developed, arguments and endless discussions on the best way to organize one's thoughts on how to organize one's thoughts... **in hindsight, these people are insufferable**, but I can credit them for helping me to discover digital gardens. digital gardens take the formality of a blog and shatter it. it gives you a place to take notes that you can share, ideas that aren't quite fleshed out all the way, research that isn't quite done and writing that isn't quite perfect. it lets you post as often as you want while maintaining any structure you like. my digital garden doesn't have to center on one thing, it can center on everything that i enjoy reading, researching, writing about or doing. i can write about [[anarchism]] in the same place that i write about [[software development]]. in a world of content creators telling you to niche down to capture the algorithm, in a world of writers telling you to write perfectly, in a world of ad revenue driving content driving ad revenue driving content... ... digital gardening feels pretty damn good. i can create a space that is my own. it has all of my interests, it isn't beholden to an algorithm or an advertiser, and i can write about anything i want. obsidian makes it stupid simple to set one up, and i can write in the same place i take notes in. it doesn't have the paywall that Medium puts up around everything, and if obsidian decides that gardening tips and a bit of ranting on anarchism is worth censoring, everything is held in markdown files that are on my system that I can just host somewhere else. the user experience is amazing with obsidian digital gardens as well. it's like peeling back layers of bullshit that venture capitalists and JavaScript Framework Abstraction Bros have foisted upon the modern web. i write out a big markdown boii, insert some images into my big markdown boii, and hit a button and it's done.