Day 33: blogging as a digital garden?

I was watching Max Stoiber's livestream where he builds his new personal site. And i saw a few names I recognize – Joel Hook, Brian Lovin. They are people I keep on my radar as “Future Friends”, as titled on my twitter list. It's named that way because I find them inspirational for being great at their own craft. I'd love to meet them and make friends with them some day.







Recognizing these names, my mind switched gears quickly. I see a new keyword, “Digital Gardens” associated with them. So I googled “digital gardens joel hooks” and came across his post on Google:







Unfortunately, the site seems down so I had to access the Google cache version which looks like this:







Ok, this is getting more interesting. I read on.



What's a Digital Garden?!?



I don't want to bore you with all the literature [1][2] behind this term. So here's the quick brief on what it is and why does it matter for you?



A Digital Garden is your online space that's not constrained by timelines. You don't write blog posts sorted by time – most recent, last created, etc. Instead, you treat your writing as belonging to 2 broad categories, as if they were plants in your real life garden:



1. 🌱 The Sprout – your sprout labelled posts are work in progress. Readers can expect these to dramatically change anytime.

   
   

2. 🌻 The Flower – a fully grown plant that has blossomed into a flower, your posts labelled with this are finalized works. Readers can expect they won't change dramatically.



Your home page can contain posts labelled as flowers, which you are likely to be more than proud to share with the world. Posts labelled with sprouts are still on the site, but readers will know to tread with caution.



In this way, you can now organize your online writings on your online space without being worried it'll affect the reading experience of your visitors. You can still curate the best of your content on your home page. Should your readers choose to venture further, they could look at your raw thoughts.



Neither will you have to find another space on another software or app to store your raw thoughts – you're likely to forget them anyway.



This approach, as simple as it may sound, may have a profound impact on how you write. I'll be giving this a try first, and you can follow me on Twitter or my daily blog to see how this works out.



How am I feeling now?

I’m not sure what sickness I’ve been down with the last week. Good chance it’s just sinus, or a minor flu. God forbid, I hope it’s not COVID. Im probably thinking too much and worrying myself unnecessarily . I shouldn’t have watched COVID verified patients vlogging about their quarantine experiences. It really made me feel the fear of having to stay alone in a ward for weeks — i will never know how long it would take for me to recover from that virus if I had it.



the past few days haven’t been the best. I did zilch for work related matters. Not even school work got done properly. All these paranoia about COVID and the sudden bouts of sinus — which has flu like symptoms is making me panic. I can’t focus at all.



My body intermittently feels cold at certain timings throughout the day. Strangely, I don’t think it’s fever because I’ve felt my forehead with my arms, as most people would usually do if they suspect a fever. If it’s warm, they will use a thermometer. I felt no warmth on my neck or forehead. Ok the contrary, I felt that my body temperature seemed lower than usual.



as my body temperature is lower than usual, I’m almost always sleepy and in need of a blanket to hide under to gather back my body heat. So I would nap multiple times in the day for the past week.

once I’m awake, I can’t really focus on anything because I don’t know where to start. I’m constantly anxious about my school work getting affected. My mind being occupied by thoughts of school, it left me no room to work on Young Makers

Young Makers Progress



nothing. I’m really sad. But I’m feeling better now and I’m taking lots of vitamins to fight this. I’ll recover soon and get back in shape.



ive been writing for 33 days consistently. I’ve proven to myself I can build a habit and keep it. In a way, I’ve started laying the bricks for my personal growth and productivity systems.



the next thing to do is to build a Shipping / Maker system. I’m currently reading JFS by Amy Hoy and I think this will work out.