quartz/content/Essays/why-i-garden.md

---
title: Why I Garden
tags:
  - cloud
  - essay
  - seedling
date: 2023-08-23
---
## Short answer: fun.

I don't get to write stream-of-consciousness in my day-to-day, or to document arbitrary technical problems and how I've solved them. This is a fun place for that outlet.

## Long Answer

There are a lot of beautiful rabbit holes on the internet if you know where to look. Wikis for arbitrary fandoms, project websites, blogs, the like. I'd like to be one of those, or at least a starting point for someone to find a rabbit hole.

The kind of experience I want to be a part of has some basis in the early internet. There was a vocal minority pushing for this sort of unguided exploration, supplemented only by signposts of where one *could* travel from a given page, instead of where one *should* travel [[#1.|(1)]].

Practicality also plays a significant role: documenting my mental state means that I'm much more likely to have a fully formed opinion on the subject I'm writing about at any given point in that writing process. I like being able to talk about things, and as someone who struggles with articulating myself on-the-fly, it's helpful that I've cemented my talking points by writing them out. Not to mention it allows me to critically examine my own views like any others. The mental disconnect between words in the formatting you write them ([[Projects/Obsidian/editor|Obsidian]]) and their appearance in another medium ([[Projects/Obsidian/digital-garden|Quartz]]) is a boon to both editing and analysis, and a skill I picked up from my legal writing mentors.

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## References
##### 1. 
[Maggie Appleton - A Brief History and Ethos of the Digital Garden](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history)

---
## Further Reading
Jacky Zhao has a really good garden if you'd like to explore it [here](https://jzhao.xyz/). They're also the creator of Quartz, which is [[Projects/Obsidian/digital-garden|how I publish this site]].