Obsidian Thoughts
After using Obsidian for about two months, I've kinda written a haphazard collection of thoughts around how I gather information/take notes since I struggle with note-taking and never found appeal in saving quotes or thoughts from books, or have a think piece about a book ... or rather my brain just straight up doesn’t work like that. If someone asked me for a memorable quote, I couldn’t offer you that. I can offer memorable moments and emotions at that moment—I think in experiences and emotions about general things, I suppose.
So what drove me to use Obsidian? Learning. I do not remember things I’ve learned, or rather I do not retain them well. I can understand something perfectly and then blank out on how to do it a week later, or even a few days later. So Obsidian felt perfect to make learning notes and to link them together.
Hell, I've even made a whole wiki for myself for my Genshin game so I have access to every character without needing to boot up the game, or check out what builds I had planned for characters, and it's fun to see everything tie together between nations, elements, materials used for weapons and characters, game roles, and so on.
I've begun storing recipes here too, though this one I'm torn if I wanna do it on my iPhone notes (which has a great built-in conversion for tablespoons/cups), or keep it here, or do both. It's easier for me to format here, versus copy and pasting recipe stuff on mobile (so in the end I might still do both).
I don’t know what I’d call this … the concept of PKM, commonplacing, zettelkasten and all that fly over my head to some degree; I want to give a name to what system I’m using (just for the sake of knowing What it is), but I also just accept this is my place to store snippets of information that tie together into their own bubbles (since I really don’t think my random note on why leaves turn green during autumn will have connections to my studies in Blender).
I would maybe like to analyze articles more, but circling back to quotes … my brain just doesn’t work well at unpacking things, or citing quotes, and it’s a barrier I don’t know how to work with outside bookmarking articles I genuinely found interesting and maybe one day forcing myself to take notes on it and what I liked about them.
Regardless, aside from my unsureness in what my note-taking system is and places I wish to change how I handle, it’s been nice having a ‘hub’ of information that’s local, not locked to something online like Notion. I do have the sync so I can type on the go (I take notes of my day to transfer to my physical journal, and sometimes it happens on my walks), but otherwise this is just for me (and my hard drive backups).
Maybe I need to take sticky note thoughts as I read stuff but haha, I’m cursed with a brain that Does in the Moment, it doesn’t Stop to Write. It’s why I forget because I get focused on doing with my metaphorical—or literal—hands, not documenting it until I’m done and out of that focused state (which sometimes is a minus because I will forget what I’ve done).
Anyway, to summarize, it's been nice to be able to write down things to revisit later, and it helps for my own memory to write down things like mechanical steps to do things ... I also like my shiny chart (all the yellow stuff is my Genshin Wiki, oops).
