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Welcome to my Mercurial Garden.
Note: This is a living breathing page and will change as I learn more about how these tools work. There will be typos. Many of them. I am writing for healing not for academia nor grammar awards. Expect randomness. And long periods with no posts.
My name is Kristina and this is my Mercurial Garden, a place where I store seeds of ideas that have been living rent-free in my head. This is my attempt to take my learning and interests public through the old fashioned use of a text-centered blog.
It seems standard practice to share my note-taking process, so let's start there. I don't have one. I have notebooks on top of notebooks and files saved in folders containing duplicate files of folders...
You get the point.
I need a process. My brand of AuDHD likes systems that
- keep me engaged,
- feed my tendency to rabbit hole;
- don't make me feel like an idiot when trying to customize them
- are not so process intensive that I forget what I initially want to do.
- isn't run by a raging tech bro who wants world domination, a harem, and eugenics dressed up as loving concern.
I've been an Obsidian user on and off for some time although prior to last month, it had been on a Intel Mac that gets too hot for comfort, lying dormant for quite some time. But I am a notetaker, annotator, and list maker and despite my affinity for paper (I'll show you some of my leather traveler notebook covers and the chunky journals I like to make), I've been using my phone's Note's app more and more.
That's fine for random thinking. But not for brainstorming when you are writing a book and need to connect ideas is a easy way. In the recent past, I've used linked chapters in MS Word, still struggling to get the hand of Scrivener, and have tried the free online service, Ellipus.
Obsidian feels like some apps I've used and really liked but can no longer use as I mostly use a PC and a iPhone. Bearapp and, Ulysses which are both for MacOS only, were my go to apps back when our family was a Mac fam. And let's not forget Drafts. The difference between those apps and Obsidian is less about what it offers and more so about how it feels.
And it feels so natural to write in markdown, have the ability to make templates, and catalogue backlinks. Also, I've been writing in Obsidian consistently for the last two weeks straight, since finishing up my setup.
When people ask me what is the best planner or software for a task. I tell them what a friend once to me: The best [whatever] is the one that gets you to do whatever you need to do that motivated you to try the [whatever].
I am writing, so Obsidian, to me is the best option.
However, I don't quite have a process yet, but what I do use quite frequently, is the Obsidian Web Clipper plugin and reader. I've installed templates from Steph Kepano, the CEO and creator of Obsidian, who shares their entire process. I recommend checking it out because it will answer way more questions than I can at this point. Currently, my custom list include settings for The StoryGraph (a Goodreads replacement if all you want is books, reviews, stats, and light convos), Libro.fm (affiliate); Bookshop.org (affiliate), and Story Ideas (a custom template for my ideas and story sparks). Once I test my custom templates settings a few more times, I'll share them here.
Mostly, I am trying to use Obsidian as a digital traveler's notebook. It's becoming a place where I write, distraction free, and where I think in a mess of incomplete sentences.
But before you do, get to know me: