Today is Thanksgiving. A day to reflect and be with family. To capture some stillness and enjoy good food and friends. Personally it has been a difficult year. My mother passed and my family home was sold. I walked my last walk through the rooms of my childhood, and lived many memories again.
It was also a time of tremendous personal growth. A turning point in that growth was my discovery of Obsidian, a markdown based local-first note taking app. As an ADHD person I have long known I need good notes. My memory is fleeting and my interests varied. Previous solutions had me taking notes, but losing them forever.
Backlinking, a core feature of Obsidian was a flash of lightning. The moment I saw a graph of notes, I knew I found the solution. Above you can see my own graph. I will go into more depth at another time, but needless to say I found a way to link all my ideas. I now “swim” through my notes as links to one another, always connected and growing.
Each day my note opens to center and remind me where to go from here. In the future I want to blog more on how all this works, but today I am thankful for this. This note is like its own loki from which I can interact with this digital world. As a software engineer who truly has another persona digitally, this page reminds me of the endless now we truly live in. A reminder that I am not digital. It turns the digital world from an endless avalanche, into a form I control.
Giving Thanks
Here in this digital space I give thanks to Obsidian. But I don’t live here and give thanks to my siblings, my family, my friends. I am thankful that we get to live in this world. This endless now is free, we only need to reach out and hold it inside ourselves.
Eat good food, give real hugs, let your smiles flow freely. We are all here now, and the food is fucking delicious.