Writing

I’ve been reading about digital gardens, which are personal websites that are organized like “freeform, work-in-progress wikis.” Rather than polished articles, digital garden entries are more loose, more like notes and ideas. And given that it’s a garden, the author comes back to tend it—editing entries, adding information, and reorganizing. This is how a digital garden differs from a traditional blog that has finished posts in chronological order.

Digital gardens are about process and craft. Blogs are for fleshed-out ideas and cohesive thinking.

Maybe.

As I was reading about digital gardens and going down this rabbit hole, I got the impression that there isn’t a clear divide between digital gardens and blogs, aside from site structure. The difference is in how the author uses their space and what their intentions are. I see overlap between blogs and digital gardens; not a clear divide.

A blog can use categories and tags to navigate topics. Posts can link to each other (interlinked). The writer can go back and edit posts whenever. These characteristics can apply to digital gardens as well as blogs.

My blog is my way of “working with the garage door up” and showing my work. Working out in the open welcomes conversation and discussion…and hopefully offers ways to connect with people. I think that’s what the internet is for at its core.

I like using my blog to write about ideas. It could be something I came across reading (an article, a book) or watching (a TV show, a movie, a YouTube video). This post itself came out of learning about digital gardens. (So meta!)

And to be frank, blogging is writing practice. I write with pen and paper in a journal most days, but that’s free flowing. It doesn’t need to have structure or organization. That’s just for me. Blogging is still for me, but it’s also writing for other people to read. I spend some time organizing and editing, but I still don’t treat blog posts as formal writing. Some other blogs are definitely more formal. That’s up to personal intention.

Further reading on digital gardens

Examples

• https://notes.busterbenson.com/
• https://www.gwern.net/index
• https://www.mentalnodes.com/

Articles

• https://dev.to/jbranchaud/the-digital-garden-l10
• https://christiantietze.de/posts/2020/05/digital-gardening/
• https://schof.co/digital-garden/

When I was in elementary school, we had carnivals twice a year, one in the fall and one in the spring. The carnivals were family fun nights, where we went to school for a few hours and played games, ate hot dogs and cotton candy, and entered raffles.

One year, the prizes were themed after the solar system. There were posters, freeze dried ice cream (remember that?), key chains–things like that. If you won, you got one of those “good” prizes. If you played a game and lost, though, you still got a few glow-in-the-dark stars, the kind you can stick on your ceiling.

Those stars were at every game, so I played and lost a few times, and still got all these plastic stars and planets.

I heard one of the teachers explain the prizes to a parent. I thought I heard her say the stars were the “constellation prize,” and it made sense to me. I could take these stars home and stick them to my ceiling in formation. I could make the Big Dipper and Orion. That was pretty cool.

It was a few years until I realized what that teacher actually said–the prize you get even when you don’t win is the consolation prize.

Years later, this is my favorite thing I’ve ever misheard.

It sounds like a good band name. It was the name of an album, long after I misheard the phrase in elementary school.

I use “Constellation Prize” as a name for random creative projects I’m working on, especially when I don’t have a plan for where the project is going. It’s a label I use for my own reference, so later on, I know, yes, that was a random thing I did for a bit.

And like those random stars and planets I got in elementary school just for trying, the name fits.

I was organizing some old files and found a short story I wrote in 2009 while studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I thought I had posted it here at some point, but no, I hadn’t. Now seems like a good a time as any. So, here it is.

Every Wednesday between classes, I have two hours to kill. Two hours to be productive by reading a long article in Spanish about magical realism and the writers who best exemplify the movement. Two hours to drink tea (I don’t like coffee and it’s terrible here anyway) or watch the news on TV (la presidente is visiting Chile this week, the highlights of yesterday’s fútbol game). Two hours to pretend to be a local while I sit in this café.

This is routine for me now. After Art History, I take the B-line two stops east to the “microcentro,” the business and theater district of Buenos Aires. It’s not actually in the center of the city. It’s more northeast, but that’s how it is in Buenos Aires—people say things they don’t mean.

I come to this café every Wednesday morning at 10:30, give or take a few minutes. The menu here is huge, physically and in terms of options for breakfast and lunch. I’m not much of a breakfast person, so I order té con leche (tea with milk) and medialunas. The tea is a British brand, nothing special, but medialunas are the best food I’ve eaten in Argentina. They’re palm-sized croissants with flaky dough and come in two varieties: plain or sweetened with a thin coat of syrup on top. Most places have only the sweetened kind, and I won’t complain about that.

The waiter comes back with a full tray. I ordered two things, right? But not even the menus here are clear on what they mean. Té con leche means I get a large mug with a saucer, a tiny pitcher of warm milk on a saucer, a small teapot of hot water on a plate, and a tiny glass of orange juice. 

The first time I ordered tea in Buenos Aires, I thought it was a strange custom of mixing orange juice into your tea. But no, the locals drink the orange juice separately. A little bit of vitamin C never hurt anyone.

Medialunas come in a basket. If they’re larger ones, you get three. Smaller ones, four. 

My square table that is supposed to seat two is covered with excessive glassware. I rearrange everything into an arc around me to make space for that magical realism article. The page I’m on is talking about Julio Cortázar’s use of time. He likes to jump around a lot.

I unwrap the tea bag and drop it into the teapot. I look up at the TV and see that the public bus employees are striking this afternoon. Fine, I take the subway home on Wednesdays anyway. After the tea steeps, I fill my mug halfway. The rest I fill with milk.

Some of my friends back home joke about how much sugar I put in my tea. As in, I have some tea with my sugar. That didn’t change when I switched hemispheres. Most people in Buenos Aires have too much sugar and caffeine anyway. It’s because they stay up late and wake up early. Every kiosk on every street corner has a variety of sweets and candy bars to give you a sugar boost any time of the day. The waiter probably doesn’t think anything of the three sugars I put in my tea. Either that or he’s used to it by now. I always have the same waiter.

When you walk into most shops in Buenos Aires, employees will immediately walk up to you and ask what you’re looking for. This makes sense for two reasons. One, they want to make a sale, and two, direct contact with customers reduces shoplifting. 

Restaurants and cafés don’t work that way. Usually you walk in and find a table yourself. When the waiter notices you, he gives you a menu. You have to wave him over when you’re ready to order. You may take your time eating and sit for as long as you like, and then you have to get the waiter’s attention again for the bill.

Americans are used to attentive waiters so the first few times I ate out were frustrating, but I don’t mind as much anymore. The locals are better at it than I am, but I’m getting there.