blogging project
What are we trying to achieve?
At some point I've got to force myself to actually show people what I write, because otherwise I'm going to keep feeling like it's a waste of time to fucking do it. My sense of object permanence is not so deranged as to trust in the durability of my hard drive, nor is my sense of causality (mortality?) satisfied with the idea of doing "something for myself alone".
I would like very much to grow past these shackles I've placed on myself where I must believe I will die if the work I care about is ever seen.
What do you mean, work I care about?
Fair question. It's not as though I don't care about my day job: I've learned at this point not to deride the work I do to make money and fill my day because I can't actually do it if I'm sneering at it. So I see through the murk, notice the bones of reality floating in the fleshy uncertain movements of contingencies and justifications, content myself with those, and find some fire in each day to burn through the next portion of whatever seems to be important or interesting; and if it's a little easier each day to drink the kool-aid, to attach my worth to things I didn't decide to value, well; I got through school, I can get through a job. It's not much different.
Writing is different.
Nobody has to pay me to write. It's fun. The mere bare facts of the process, without further context, feel good and clean and somehow powerful. I think it's quite hard to decontextualize writing: words carry their usages into every context. So writing well is like designing a good naturalistic experiment - familiar pieces gently arranged into morally sound yet surprising shapes, making things that might have always been there easier to see.
It's horrifically vulnerable. I lose myself in the work of arrangement, follow the thread of reasoning around the page, impose and refine and transform frames as I get a clearer sense of the impression I'm trying to chase down - and then, well, fuck. I'm done. (And what have I just done? Why does this exist out where people might see? Do you have no sense of shame? I ask myself (something in me asks me?) - beneath the beration, it's just a seizing up of my shoulder blades, a burning in my gut - and impending is the wave of cold fatigue that will come over me, the phantom of a literal-feeling wet blanket, that makes it so I don't get to do the part that comes next. )
I want to get good at the part that comes next.
You haven't answered the question.
It doesn't really unbake further than that. I want to do this. I don't know why.
Okay, so why does it matter that people see?
...just in case.
What if it's useful?
What it it's beautiful?
Nah, all sort of dodging the question. It's more tautological than that. Words are meant to be read. Spoken, sung, written, read. Tool implies function. It was already apparent when I set out using the tool that I wanted, once I was done, that it was for others to see.
how we're doing it
blog
The place where the entire notebook goes. It will get populated slowly, as I edit and curate things.
tags
tags are indices
I already use tags heavily, albeit halfheartedly, to say what a post is about.
sometimes an index needs to be an index. how to generate link pages?
keywords seems like a cool idea.
but in the end, manual is hard to beat.
this is what grep is for.
elevate state to configuration. do it, then see how to standardize it.
todo implement tag pages
tags are control related
tags (esp those below) represent what to do with a post, programmatically or otherwise.
stub tag
things that could stand some fleshing out. not necessary to do it but if you want writing ideas this is a good place to go.
draft tag
things that are WIP to become "done and good", and in their turn substack posts.
"this is done and good" tag (name TBD)
things that get posted to substack.
noexport tag
To be used on child headings! Can dump WIP stuff there. It's meant to be an inbox to drain into publishing or archiving. So as not to break links, an empty page gets created for noexport headings with the correct org id (and possibly the title also).
working implement noexport in uniorg
done out of the box for heading-level tags
file-level roam tags are comprehensively not picked up by this skeleton.
get file-level tags working.
citations and references
done get citations working
done get references to display nicely
latex
todo get latex equations to render properly
dailies
daily notes don't get exported. if something interesting happens in a daily note, extract it to its own note!
todo dailylog functions
archive
Archived headings don't get exported. Links to archived entries get redirected to 404. Some things get archived because they're private, some because I don't want to let them stand.
exporting to web format
uniorg
workflow to get a minimal site up and running:
nix-shell -p nodejs_latest
npx create-next-app --example https://github.com/rasendubi/uniorg/tree/master/examples/org-braindump braindump
cd braindump
mv public public.default
ln -s ~/org-notebook ./public
npm run dev
Optionally, copy the default's index.org to the notebook to make it so the landing page doesn't break.
Go to http://localhost:3000/archive and click around!
todo create a flake for the deployment
todo git hook to publish on commit
blotter and folio
I forgot to migrate over the last version of this blog! It was much smaller and cuter and the org source for it lives in the backup of my last laptop.
todo dig up old laptop backup and go.
formatting
todo format todos
todo format quotes
todo format citations
links and citations
all links must be citations.
todo script to convert all links to citations
handles links in headings (relic of old system)
finds all links in pages
todo export more information about citations
todo tooltips for citations
todo drain Bookmarks
todo emacs function to create a roam-ref page from a url
setup process notes
now that I have a minimal example running,
I really would rather clean and publish as I go. Some of this is work I actually wanted to be good!
implementing the tagging behaviours
is going to involve typescipt. urk. okay let's see.
substack
things get posted here on a schedule.
Okay, it appears we've got to argue with ourselves about this for a bit. Does it make sense? Why a schedule? I think simply because it shows seriousness. Who are we showing seriousness to? Ourselves. Why does it makes sense to show ourselves things? Because that's how you solve problems, by looking closely at the clearest versions of them you can. The schedule is a tool to support the relationship I want to have with my writing work.
aside: using the phrase writing work feels like brushing my hair the wrong way.
fascinating that this too can be savoured.
I've got to put something out every two weeks.
It's okay if it's short. it's okay if it's bad (although I suspect it isn't, really; but maybe the injunction will help when I'm next trapped in a bout of perfectionism.) There are no other restrictions. It jsut has to go out once every two weeks.
workflow
I envision capture-refile-archive on steroids. I've decided to call the refile-archive part (which is the part on steroids) Toricelli.
Capture (inbox)
Things have to become stubs somehow. It sure would be nice if this could happen directly from mobile, but it's okay if not - my Telegram saved messages serves just fine.