Don’t ask me why I occasionally try to move away from Emacs. I can’t explain it. Under duress, I’d say it’s because Emacs swallows the world, and I like changing things up. Doing everything in Emacs makes that difficult. Org-mode is unmatched, but it’s also essentially useless outside of Emacs1. I get a little twitchy about that. Also, sometimes a package update throws a wrench into my Emacs config or I become tired of C-x C-whatever all the time and so I start shopping for a replacement.
Anyway, this was supposed to be about Obsidian, which lives and breathes Markdown2. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve (re)installed Obsidian, thinking this time it’ll stick, for sure!
It hasn’t stuck yet, but I was determined to give Obsidian the entire month of December to win me over. I made it as pretty as I know how to. I installed the few essential plugins. I created some nice templates. Each morning I’d fire up a new “Daily Note” with my fancy template. Then…nothing. Even though I already knew this, I simply don’t enjoy using Obsidian. There’s something about it that doesn’t jibe with my brain. I don’t like how the sidebars work. I don’t like how it handles attachments. It doesn’t feel right, ya know?
I keep trying to use it because there are things I like about Obsidian. I like that it can do a lot of fancy stuff, easily, and right out of the box without me having to spend hours figuring out why my hand-made Lisp function isn’t working. Linking is easier in Obisidian, and although the Graph is mostly useless, it’s still cool to look at. “Unlinked mentions” is a great feature for apps like this, too.
The best thing about Obsidian, though, is it works on macOS and Linux without fuss, and it syncs easily with just about any sync tool. Or I can pay for Obsidian Sync, which is even nicer. Oh, and it works on iOS, which comes in handy.
So for a week I tried emphasizing the things I like and ignoring the things I don’t. It didn’t work. Obsidian is almost certainly the Right Answer for many people, even me, probably. I couldn’t do it. I caved after only a week.
That means I’m once again back in Emacs. Emacs is too good at too many things, so I’ll probably never be able to leave it permanently. I’ll just occasionally become annoyed with something about it and try switching to something else for a minute…again. Maybe Octarine next time 🤔.
