# Remembering the fallen.
# Over the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about how to move forward with the blog or, rather, with writing in general after the Great Notes Catastrophy.
The way the blog operates has changed over time but there's more that can be done to make it more individual, more personal. With that in mind I've been reading about digital gardens again.
If you've been reading for a while you may remember that I tried this before, using a wiki plugin but it didn't work out at the time.
I've said so many times about being a fast writer but feel that I'm finally ready to slow down. Updating my notes over a period of time (even if it was just to convince myself I was still interested) showed me that I could return, adding new thoughts without the pressure of having to finish or hit publish.
I didn't want to do something as intense as a wiki (I installed Obsidian on my MacBook a while back but just haven't touched it) but wanted to do something more permanent than a blog post whilst still being just as casual.
I don't think a notes app on my phone is really the ideal place for this so wondered about something on the blog; it would have to be simple enough to manage in a mobile browser. What if I took the inline editing from the blog and applied it to pages?
Over the past couple of days I've, therefore, come up with a rudimentary solution which includes the following features:
- new page templates for the "garden"
- the ability to create and delete pages programatically
- the same inline editing as with posts
- wiki style links between pages using "[[ ]]" delimiters that are automatically translated to working HTML tags on display.
- a parent/child system (so far only one layer deep) to group pages correctly
Home/Index:
Page:
As with the Post functionality, all controls are hidden if you don't have permission to use them. I plan to increase the number of child layers once I work out the logic for multiple nested queries but this will do for a start.
I'm really happy with how it's come together in such a short space of time and hope that I'll make use of this more as it's a "roll your own" solution. I imagine it being the staging area for thoughts that could become posts as well as a resource to link to from elsewhere.
@colinwalker nice. The great notes catastrophe still makes me feel sad - keep truckin’
Thanks. I figure if it's all here then there's no excuse and (hopefully) no risk.
Rao's post rang true to me: engineer my next process. It echoes my desire to do something a bit different with my writing, to work in a different way and see what comes of it. The garden may seem like an all consuming vanity project (it very likely is) undertaken in lieu of actual writing but it is also a means to an end, a creative endeavour in its own right. On this day last year Blogging for now was probably what kick-started my thoughts moving to a more ephemeral blog: writing for now, today, as though that's all that matters. In that context the garden seems a contradiction, maybe it is, but I am that contradiction - we all are. I reserve the right to change my mind, to disagree with past me just as future me will turn his nose up at the present. I need to look for different ways of working/doing/thinking, to not get trapped in habit. I need to find purpose and establish proper goals and, hopefully, having everything in one place will help.