On bookmarking and saving things
I just finished reading an article by Haley Nahman talking about the way we save things (and the linked article by Joan Westernberg where she deleted 7 years worth of notes on Obsidian), and how we gather knowledge.
The bookmark is a kind of fantasy: Not just in the sense that we can convince ourselves, while employing it, that we will one day transform an old t-shirt into shorts, but that by using it we’re not merely passive observers of our social feeds, but active participants, explorers, collectors. Gathering resources for a life we’re bound to start living.
And it's such a weird feeling of ... I dunno how to put it. God knows my own bookmarks are full of things; tutorials for game engines, asset packs that I might use for projects, episodes for shows I partially watched, things I hope to revisit ... but it's also a case of like ... how many of these are framed in the light of someone who genuinely also struggles with memory problems (potential ADHD)?
Don't get me wrong, I am aware a lot of the things in my notes I may never revisit; a fleeting, captured thought. My Genshin Wiki by the end will mean nothing when the game comes to its finality, or I stop playing.
My Raindrop.io app has a lot of bookmarks I may never revisit (like Blender tutorials on niche things I thought were cool), or maybe they may be of help for people I know later down the line, or a hoard of pixel favicons I can snag for my site.
It's also a balance of ... trying to figure out what's worth saving. What's worth unpacking for things to take away. Trying to note down things I'd like to retain for the future. I definitely can say I don't take notes on things, I'm new to it ... new in a way that's not for school. God knows I haven't revisited anything of my school notes for game design, but ideas I've learned stuck with me.
I'm still trying to understand what I want to remain with me. Technical knowledge does not stick, I know that, because that knowledge is not flexible, it doesn't change ... it's static in a way. The way you do a function in Unity in C# does not change.
The function and feel of game mechanics does, it's vibes (and a functional understanding of the player and human psyche), and that sticks with me better because it is flexible and human. That I can internalize better.
I do know it is a very fine line, even Joan writes:
Worse, the architecture began to shape my attention. I started reading to extract. Listening to summarize. Thinking in formats I could file. Every experience became fodder.Â
I stopped wondering and started processing.
Some part of me wants to take away something from things I read, I consume, because I've never properly done it until now, and sometimes it has sorely bitten me in the ass. Sometimes I want it to be tangible rather than just a vibe, words I can look back on rather than a vague memory that, albeit correct, is not concrete.
Case in point, I'd like to try to unpack nonfiction books that are with a goal in mind (ex. Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Devon Price's Laziness Does Not Exist, Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things, Susan Pinsky's Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD ... gee do you notice a theme?), though some part of me also wonders if the vibes and themes of the books will stick with me without needing to write it down (unless it's something very specific like using wall hooks for coats instead of relying on a deadly coat rack or the closet where clothes will hide Forever in).
And some part of it is also learning what is junk, or old thoughts.
Hell, I began learning Godot and taking notes as I went through Brackey's Godot Platformer Tutorial, to try to understand how everything functions in the engine itself so that it doesn't slip away next time I go back in, but I'm tempted to nuke those notes. Delete them. I know I will feel remnants of familiar memories when I return, because I sat to try to write them in the first place, but they serve me no use now outside of clogging my notes in a haphazardly written fashion.
But something like how OnDestroy() works for Unity I need to keep, because I never, never remember exactly how it works and how it works in an example, and I know I will be working with Unity for a long, long time. Same goes with all the new CSS/HTML language I'll be using because ... (vaguely gestures to my Neocities page).
It sucks that this is a very person-specific thing. What I think as things to keep or throw away, may be the opposite for someone else. I hoard onto things I think may be useful, only to find out much later down the line that it's a dead weight. It also sucks that we're in an era where it's hard to not just feel like you are consuming without processing, but that processing itself can become too much, and throw everything out of balance.
I still think that no information learned is wasted, even if the memory does not hold onto it. This part of Joan's article, the ending, really feels like it's something that hit it on the head and had me coming here to write this:
Nietzsche burned early drafts. Michelangelo destroyed sketches. Leonardo left thousands of pages unfinished. The act of deletion is a reassertion of agency.
In design, folks talk about subtraction as refinement. A sculptor chips away everything that is not the figure. A musician cuts a line that clutters the melody. But in knowledge work, we hoard. We treat accumulation as a virtue.
But what if deletion is the truer discipline?
I don’t think I want a map of everything I’ve ever read. I want a mind free to read what it needs. I want memory that forgets gracefully. I want ideas that resurface because they mattered, not just because an index card was forced to the forefront by some complex system of levers and pulleys.Â
What does it feel like to start again?
I write knowing it may disappear, and I highlight books knowing the highlights will fade. I trust that what matters will return, will find its way to the surface. I no longer worship the permanence of text.
There is a Hebrew word: “zakhor.” It means both memory and action. To remember, in this tradition, is to fulfill an ethical obligation; to make the past present through attention.
My new system is, simply, no system at all. I write what I think. I delete what I don’t need. I don’t capture everything. I don’t try to. I read what I feel like. I think in conversation, movement, and context. I don’t and I won’t build a second brain. I just want to get a whole lot better at inhabiting the first. Drawing on something DHH (37Signals) told me a couple of years ago, I’ve started keeping a single note called WHAT where I write down a handful of things I have to remember. The important bits will find their way back.
Joan, I hope you're right, though god damn OnDestroy() sure doesn't find its way back easily.