A digital garden is a new way of writing and creating content. I always wanted to create my blog and talk about everything I'm learning and showcase my progress as a developer. Flatiron requires all their students to write blogs and this was the perfect chance, I wrote quite a few blogs on dev.to and some even got some recognition! Post-graduation I started getting more anxiety out posting blogs and agonizing over their correctness and my general writing skills. Suddenly blogs became less fun and more of a way to market myself for my job search. I whole-heartedly agree with what Joel Hooks said:
Everybody is treating writing as a "content marketing strategy" and using it to "build a personal brand" which leads to the fundamentally flawed idea that everything you post has to be polished to perfection and ready to be consumed.
In order to escape this need for perfection and get back to writing and exploring for fun, enter the digital garden! I first learned about digital gardens from Joel Hooks and swyx. Digital gardens focus on the process of creating content and constantly updating and curating as you learn and grow. Like real gardens, each post is at a different stage. They're either finished (🌻), or in progress (🌱) and are being pruned and updated as I learn more. Even as I'm writing this post I feel a lot less pressure and it feels more like a conversation. I hope people are encouraged to start their own garden and release more thoughts and notes into the world. We hold ourselves to their high standards of perfection and I much rather be focusing on growing and learning. I want this garden to be a place where I can learn. Expect some mistakes, ramblings, and incomplete articles as you peruse the garden. If you'd like to help me learning by correcting a mistake or sharing some of your knowledge on a subject feel free to reach out to me on Twitter!
Top comments (1)
So happy to see people joining the Digital Garden movement!
I started my Digital Garden in 2020 and recently reached the 70 notes mark.
Did you maintain yours all this time?