I have been spending a lot of time working on this site recently. Due to that, I’ve been thinking a lot about what this site is. I’m constantly making decisions about what I want to post here and what I don’t want to post, about how I want to present it, and consequently how I want to present myself. It’s interesting to see how much these questions stress me out, and yet I really want to think about them and get them right. I suppose the tension here is between my fear of getting them wrong in some way, and my desire to be public.
As part of that thinking, I wanted to write here about it. I don’t really know what the conclusion here will be, but I wanted to think about it through this post. I don’t know the answers, but I do know the questions. I want to ask myself “what is this site?”, and have some more space to answer this question than I do in the homepage (although my answer here may inform the one there later on).
So first of all, this site is obviously a blog. It’s right there in the domain, and even if the domain changes later on, that is what my idea for the site was from the beginning. I’ve always wanted somewhere to write and share my writing and what I have been working on. Ever since I was 13 years old and I had my first blog, that is what I wanted. A website of my own, where I can share what I want.
Obviously I could do that with a Substack, or on Twitter, or even in Tumblr. There are a hundred platforms for different kinds of blogging, and I don’t have anything against any of them. I’ve even been tempted by them, particularly by Substack recently since 100 posts fits so well in that platform. I know for sure that eventually, when I feel more comfortable posting and I want to start thinking about more people reading what I write, I will start using those platforms more, even if it’s just as extensions of this blog.
The thing is, I want somewhere in the internet to be able to call mine, somewhere where I have total control over the presentation. That is what a blog offers that platforms don’t. You could say this control is a red herring, a distraction that stops me from focusing on my writing, and that is probably right to some extent.
In the last week I have spent something like 10 times more time changing the style and functionality of the blog than publishing new content. But, as I said, I deeply enjoy working on that and thinking about that, so as long as I keep writing 100 posts and I write this week’s post I don’t think I should stop myself from doing it. Eventually, when I’ve written 100 posts, if I still find that I enjoy making the website more than adding content to the website I will know that blogging is probably not for me and I can find better things to fulfil this enjoyment.
In any case, I want somewhere to share my writing and my work, somewhere I can call my home in the internet, somewhere others can visit and if they enjoy it we can be friends and even work together.
That is what this site is. It’s my home, my garden.
I don’t know that much about digital gardens, but I know how I have felt when visiting one. That is what convinced me that I wanted this site to be, beyond a blog, a digital garden.
You could say a blog is the traditional way to think about these internet homes. It is a place to publish kind-of serialised writing that is considered complete. It is the natural evolution of a magazine or a news outlet, once you add the distribution power and indivualisation of the internet.
A digital garden meanwhile, is different in that it isn’t serialised, and the published content doesn’t need to be complete. Of course, content is published somewhat chronologically, but you can post several unrelated things at once, they don’t need to have a “published date”, and there isn’t necessarily a feed of updates or latest posts. The way you navigate the garden isn’t chronological, it’s based on hyperlinks, on following your own interests like a “build your own adventure” book.
Similarly, in a digital garden the content can evolve, it’s not static. In a blog you could modify the content as well, but it’s not as common, it is more often seen as a small correction. Once you publish something, you barely touch it. In a digital garden, the things that are meant to be static are an exception, not the rule.
I find the idea of digital gardens compelling for those two reasons as well. I’ve always loved open-world games, and to me a digital garden feels like that. It’s chaotic and the structure is one made in connections, where the guide is the curiosity of the reader. And the fact that the content evolves, and that it is often unfinished, removes a layer of formality, makes the content feel more honest, more transparent. When I visit a digital garden, I kind of forget that I’m visiting a website on the internet, and I really start feeling like I’m visiting a place, a home that has grown organically, like I’m being invited to peak into someone’s mind.
That said, this site, at the moment of writing this, is somewhere halfway between a traditional blog and a garden. There are serialised posts like this one, which also are meant to be done once they are finished. There is a feed of latest posts and another one of latest projects.
But there also a large number of hyperlinks, and I’m experimenting with posting my notes, thoughts that are still work in progress (seedlings and ferns). Here is one of the bits where I have been struggling the most lately. My perfectionism doesn’t like publishing stuff that I don’t consider finished, perfect, or definitely true.
I think that is okay. As I said, the main point of this site is that it is my home. Which means that I can do whatever I want. I can post serialised completed writing and chaotic unfinished notes. I want to do that. So to some extent, I think this post is about giving myself permission to do that. To post whatever I want, whether it is finished or not, and if I don’t feel like posting it I don’t need to do so. Experimentation is the key here. I want to write and I want to share things, so I can experiment with what I share and how I do it and figure it out along the way.