One thing I want to do more of this year it to write. Back when I started blogging in 2005 or 2006 I used to post everyday, often more than once. It might have been the novelty of being able to write something and have it appear on the internet for people to read that made it easier. It might also have been that the blogging community was in full force at the time, but one thing is for certain it was my hobby and I enjoyed it.

Since those heady days of the my blog something has gone astray. It might have been that all the bloggers I followed at the time became “serious” about blogging. They made careers out of it, and it made me feel like I had to be “serious” as well. Twitter also had a large impact. A lot of people, myself included, became more focused on posting there than on their blogs. Sharing took place there, but it lacked the same feel. What I do know is that somewhere along the way the joy of blogging disappeared and I lost interest.

Over the years I’ve tried to kick start the habit again but it’s never lasted more than a couple of weeks. This Christmas I’ve had some time to think and reflect over the events of the last couple of years. One thing that has become clear is that I lack a hobby, something for myself, and I want a hobby as much as I’ve realised I need one. I’ve decided that one of my intentions this year is to blog more, to find my hobby again and write for me. I try to journal most days in Obsidian which helps my mental health, but I want my blog to be more. So I’m starting off in January with a simple goal. To post something at lest once a day. Whether it’s a thought, or a link, or a longer piece is irrelevant, I want to make the act of posting a habit again. Most importantly I want to find the joy of sharing again.

This morning I found out that it's world elephant day. It's one of those facts which has stuck in my mind ever since for the simple fact that elephants are my favourite animals.

My parents tell the story of when I was small and we went to zoo together for the first time. There was one animal I wanted to see, the elephants, but for little me they were terrifying. I had only ever seen pictures of elephants in books, where the scale of the images didn't communicate to me how big the creatures are in reality. When you're a small child and see a picture of an elephant on one page and a duck on the next, the two appear the same size. So when I saw the sheer size of the creatures, I burst into tears.

I don't remember the day, but it makes me want to go back and reassure my small self that it's ok, elephants are still awesome.

Over the last couple of years I've struggled with my mental health. It's the second serious bout of depression that I've had in the last 8 years. This time, I've found elephants oddly comforting.

My Mum and my Aunt have often sent me small videos of elephants in that time and never once have they failed to bring a smile to my face. Baby elephants are funny. They do daft things and they have fun little personalities. Who can't help but laugh at the elephant that kicks it's trainer in the bum while standing next to him? They are like naughty teenagers.

There's another side to elephants which I've really come to appreciate in the last couple of years. The caring, nurturing side of the adults. I'm sure other animals exhibit these characteristics to their young, but something about the way the elephants express it is very comforting. Perhaps it's their size, and the strength and power they display, that makes it more surprising when you see a mum curl her trunk around her baby and pick it up from the ground. There's a gentleness from these animals that you wouldn't expect. At a time when the world seems more broken than it ever has, there's something oddly comforting in seeing a large creature display such gentle and caring behaviours towards others of it's kind.

I don't really know where this post is going, or really what the point of it is, other than that I wanted to write something today. So here it is. Make of it what you will.

As the title says, welcome to the eighth official version of my blog. This one has been a while in the making. It started as a new theme on Wordpress over a year ago, included a short holiday on Ghost before ending up being powered by Jekyll. That makes this the first version of my blog not to be powered by Wordpress and in all honesty it’s a refreshing change.

Since I’m using a new engine to power things, I’ve decided to take a bit of an iterative approach. What you see here is what I would call the Earliest Testable Product (ETP). It has all the basics I would like to include on my blog, a home page, an about page, an archive page, and the blog posts themselves. My intention is to gradually add features over the coming months, improve the design of some elements, and ultimately add a place to display some portfolio pieces.

The biggest decision about this new version of my blog was the move away from Wordpress. The CMS has powered this site since the very beginning, but recent versions have made me start to question how suitable it is for a site such as this. Wordpress has begun to feel quite heavy and complicated with lots of new features being added that I had no interest in. I began to crave a simpler way of doing things. Something flexible that didn’t require my Mac for me to work on so that I can do things from my iPad as well. It’s the ability to develop from my iPad is a big part of the decision. It has become my go to device away from work and the one which I do most of my writing on so being able to develop the blog from iPad became a big factor in picking the new engine.

In the next few weeks I plan to put together a roadmap to work through for both features and design improvements, at least until I get the key things implemented. In the mean time, if you see anything that seems out of place or broken, drop me an email.

Yesterday as I was sat on my sofa watching the Sunday morning church service on YouTube I had my MacBook Pro open on my lap to make notes in Obsidian. After the service had finished I spent a few minutes to tidy up some formatting and make sure the correct bible verses were being referenced, I realised how much I am enjoying using the app. It got me thinking about why.

Over the course of the day it slowly dawned on me what it is that I like about it. It doesn’t tick all the features I was hoping to find in the my notes app, but it does tick one that I didn’t list before. It is a tool for thinking, and really that’s what I’ve been looking for.

Ephemeral notes still go into Obsidian through my daily notes, and where appropriate they are linked to project notes, but I’ve found that I’m creating notes about subjects that I am thinking about or trying to learn more about. Looking at my Obsidian graph I see some small clusters starting to form. There is one about note taking itself as I read around the subject of evergreen and atomic notes; there is one around habits and routines; and there is a larger one forming related to my work and current thinking about the concept of Minimal Viable Products (MVP).

As I’ve been looking into these different applications and their feature sets, I’ve been exposed to some ideas about note taking that I had never really considered before. The concept that a “notes” app can be more than a scratchpad used throughout the day but a tool for thinking has connected with me. Really it is not a notes app but something much more useful and important. I guess this is why many people refer to these tools that I’ve been exploring as Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) or their second brain. I’m not sure either of those terms sit right with me, I think they are more than that. I am not purely gaining knowledge by using this tool and it’s not thinking for me like a second brain should, but I can use this tool to see connections between ideas. It forces me to distill concepts down to manageable chunks so that I can form my own ideas from them. This is why I’ve begun referring to it as a tool for thinking and why it’s starting to become a key part of my creative process. Time will tell if it lasts.

Today is Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, in Israel. Racism has been in the news a lot of the last year or so, and yet we hear very little of the fact that anti-semitism is on the rise.

I have visited Israel twice. It’s a place that quickly won my heart with it’s beauty and history. Last time I was there was in 2014 and I was able to visit Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. To this day when I think about my visit the feelings come flooding back.

The museum which tells of all the events that took place across Europe overwhelmed me to the point that I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to walk to the end and find a place to sit down. After a cup of tea our group then visited the memorial which names all the people who died. It was just as overwhelming. A friend who was part of our party was able to find the names of her family members in the memorial and so the Holocaust became even more of a reality to me. We learn all about the atrocities of World War 2 in our history lessons, but until there is a personal connection with the events it’s hard for it to feel like a reality. My Grandad once wrote me a letter about what he did when he fought in the War, it made the war a reality to me and not just something to learn about. Seeing my friend find her family members in the memorial had a similar effect.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this post, other than to say I will remember them. I hope you will too, and I hope that together we can all make sure that something like it is never repeated.

There are very few Jews left who survived the Holocaust, so we must find ways to make those connections with history a reality for the generations who cannot hear first hand what it was like. I think the stories of family members will play a crucial role in that. Let’s make sure it never happens again.

I’ve been continuing to seek out a notes app that works for me as well as I would like it too. A couple of weeks ago I posted about what I’m looking for and since then I’ve been giving a couple of the contenders a try.

When I wrote that post I had been using Craft for around a week or so. It’s a very good app, I like that it is native on all my devices, has good shortcuts support and is a pleasure to write in. It lacked a couple of the features on my list out of the box, but a quick shortcut was able to fix the lack of a daily note and I was happily on my way giving it a run through it’s paces.

Having been forced into a week off work thanks to some strong side effects from my Covid vaccine, last weekend I started to play with Obsidian to see how it worked. Initially put off by it I found a theme that makes it look and feel a lot more like a native macOS application. So last week I started giving it a run through it’s paces. It’s lacking a first party iOS and iPadOS app at the moment, but one is in beta and seems to be developing quickly and since there’s nowhere to go at the moment it’s not the end of the world.

I intend to give Obsidian a similar amount of time to Craft and then I’ll try to make a decision. There are a few things about Craft which started to really annoy me before I decided to give Obsidian a try, and I’m sure there will be some things about Obsidian that annoy me as well.

So far Craft feels better placed for meeting notes and capturing tasks along the way. It’s ability to easily send something to Things is great. In contrast Obsidian seems to handle referencing and embedding blocks more efficiently. Craft can do this but I ended up having some real difficulties finding blocks I wanted to reference and once I had figured out the syntax that Obsidian uses it made a lot more sense. Both apps have their strengths, I have a feeling it will be about refining how I take notes and which one will handle that.

For the last 6 months or so I have been using Roam Research as my notes app. The daily note turned into my home from home allowing me to capture things throughout the day. Thoughts, feelings, meeting notes, tasks, articles I read, videos I watched, everything got noted down in the daily note. Using the service has encouraged me to read more wisely, making notes from articles that are useful and capturing highlights and thoughts as I read books.

Over the last month or so, I’ve noticed my usage start to drop off. Some of it is related to me having days off from work, so I’m not in front of my Mac all day, but that’s not the sole reason. I’m writing this on my iPad which has become my main personal computer. Mac for work, iPad for me. I started to realise that this is part of the reason I’ve been using Roam less even though I still wanted to capture notes and thoughts. I don’t find the experience of Roam on the iPad to be that pleasant. There are too many little quirks and bits that don’t quite work properly that mar the experience enough to to make me want to stop using it.

So in the last week I started to draw up a shortlist of apps to try in an attempt to replace Roam. In order to really understand if something can grow in to a replacement I need to understand how I’ve been using Roam and what I have come to find really useful about it.

What are the key features I’m after?

Daily Notes

I’ve come to realise the joy and freedom in having a Daily Note open on my screen all day. It has become my main place to capture anything and everything. Articles I read, what’s on my mind, notes from meetings I’m in, tasks that come in. Each new item gets a time stamp and then I write down what I need.

References to blocks and pages

This is new functionality to me but one that I’ve quickly understood the value of. Being able to reference something with a back link is really powerful. If I’m in my Daily Note and jot something down about a project, being able to quickly link to that project page and have what I wrote appear there is invaluable. It frees up thoughts for thinking instead of focusing on putting it in the right place in my system.

Embedding blocks

These are even more powerful and I think have become really important for me. On a Sunday as I watch church on YouTube (who knew that would be a thing?) I make notes on the sermon. I’ve taken to adding the bible passage broken down verse by verse in a separate note, then when I need to make a note about a verse I embed the block and write a note under it. Having the text visible is really useful and having the bible passages automatically reference all the notes I make over time will be really insightful.

Capturing tasks

This is a simple one, but a quick way to capture tasks in a meeting without having to change app focus is great. Even better is the ability to send those tasks to my dedicated task manager where I can organise them after the meeting.

Journal

This final one is a little up in the air at the moment. I used the Daily Note of Roam to help me start journaling again and since beginning this quest to find a more native experience I’ve dusted off Day One and started to use that instead. As I reflected on how I had been Journaling in Roam, I realised that I didn’t intentionally use any of the connected thought features for it. Questioning why that was, I realised it’s because what I’ve been journaling about isn’t necessarily related to what I’ve been thinking about or working on, instead it’s more about processing how I feel and am handling situations. So for now I’m going to use Day One for this part of my writing, although it lacks the convenience of having one place to write I think the trade off is better for me.

On my lunch break today as I sat reading some RSS feeds, I came across a [Daily Blogging Challenge] that started on the first of March. As I clicked through to the organising site to find out more I discovered that each day they are sharing a prompt word that everyone taking part should use to kickstart their post for the day. I'm not going to commit to taking part everyday, but I liked the prompt from 1st March, [routine].

Routines have always been a bit of a comfort to me, mostly they just happen and I realise that I've settled in to one without considering what I'm doing. My morning routine for example is one that I've realised I've settled in to without really considering.

I wake up with my alarm around 07:00 and spend the next 45 minutes or so waking up. That involves a bit of snoozing, a bit of morning messaging, and a bit of bumbling around on the internet. Then I get out of bed and head towards the shower.

I'm usually dressed and ready to start my day by around 08:20. The next step is a glass of juice and my meds, followed by a sit down in my chair and a bit of time to have a quiet time with whatever reading plan I'm using in the Youversion app at the moment.

Around 08:40 I'll turn on my Mac and head to the kitchen to make coffee and sort out some food for myself before I settle at my desk to contrive the days business.

I didn't realise this was a routine I'd fallen in to until I came across Pablo Picasso's daily schedule and it started me on path looking in to the routines of other famous creators, something I'll be looking into and sharing here.

I’ve recently made some changes to the hosting for my blog and other websites as part of the consolidation of my many websites in to one. I had been aiming to have one website to rule them all integrating my portfolio and my blog into one site.

I’m in the process of creating a new theme to help accomplish that, but I realised that for a long time I’ve not wanted to post the short status posts and images on to this site. I used to use Twitter for that, and whilst I’m still on the site I rarely use it. I’ve also been a member of [Micro.Blog] since the kickstarter days, but lately I’ve found myself just observing with only the occasional reply and not actually contributing. So I’ve decided to give something a try.

I’ve setup a hosted Micro Blog, which will use one of my spare personal domains, and I’m going to try posting to there with the short status posts and images as I would’ve done on Twitter and Instagram. I’ll likely use it to share things links and things along the way. In contrast I plan to keep this blog as somewhere to post longer posts and in time to add my portfolio as well.

To simplify things, I’m thinking about using my Micro Blog and this blog as ways of generating some [Stock and Flow]. As Robin Sloan put it:

Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that reminds people you exist.
Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.
I’ve realised I’ve lost those concepts in my creative work. I no longer tweet and I don’t blog regularly, so if I can start to correct that I hope that the two blog formats can inform one another with more content.

As an extension of that I’ve also been thinking a lot about Austin Kleon’s book [Show Your Work], something which I’ve also not been doing much of lately. My hope is that I’ll be able to combine these two sites and ways of posting with showing some of my work. Be it personal or professional (when appropriate). We’ll see how it goes.

We have been in Lockdown 3 for a few weeks now as Covid-19 continues to spread through the population. The government issued stay at home notices again, but this time people don’t seem to be following things quite as closely.

It’s both frustrating and annoying seeing so many people still meeting up with friends, even travelling across cities to meet in the park for birthdays. Everyone it seems is able to find a way of exempting themselves from the rules.

I’ve decided to approach this lockdown differently as well. Maybe because it’s also a new year, I’m not sure. I’m trying to eat more healthily, snack less, and exercise more.

The nations favourite–or maybe least favourite judging by some of social media–PE teacher Joe Wicks, has been doing his live workouts again. This has been my workout of choice so far, I’ve not been doing it live as it’s at an inconvenient time for work, but I’ve been doing the recorded versions at a later time. I’m 6 for 6 so far, and I’d never thought I’d say this about HIIT workouts, but I’m actually enjoying them. Although not the ache or stiffness in my legs after.

I’ve also been taking more time to read this time. In the first lockdown I couldn’t concentrate on a book, I wasn’t able to focus for more than a couple of minutes and would find myself rereading sentences over and over. This time however has been different. I’m finding that familiar refuge in fiction again. Getting lost in another world that exists only in my imagination and one that doesn’t have the anxiety that comes with the world we live in right now.

I’ve also been watching the last season of Portrait Artist of the Year. It’s one of the few “reality” tv shows I enjoy. Previous series have always made me feel inspired, but this time around it seems to be more so. I’ve even sorted out all my old art materials with the aim of finding some time to pick up a brush. We will see what happens there.

As I finish writing this the sun is coming out. The covering of snow I woke up too this morning is still there, but I fear it may not last long. Time to dig out the wellies and go for a walk.