First off, what have I been doing since my last post?

Well as I noted in my Digital Declutter 2024 post, my focus was to read more books. And that’s what I have been doing.

During my digital declutter, I finished reading one book. That book was Outlive by Dr. Peter Attia. Great book if you’re interested in how to live longer, while maintaining a high quality of living.

A little after my digital declutter ended, I finished reading The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. Excellent book if you’re trying to understand how/why we make the decisions we do with our money.

At the moment, I’m currently reading a few other books:

• C# 12 and .NET 8 – Modern Cross-Platform Development Fundamentals – Eighth Edition by Mark Price — this is work related and is just me trying to catch up with the latest in the .NET field.
• Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky — I never finished reading this, so I decided to read this again from the start.
• Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual by Jocko Willink — I finished reading this already but am re-reading just because I want to. I’m also trying to build more discipline into other areas of my life, so I thought it would be the perfect book to read.
• The Will of the Many by James Islington — high fantasy novel from the same author who wrote The Licanius Trilogy, of which I’m a fan of.
• Word On Fire Bible Volume II: Acts, Letters and Revelations — currently making my way through Acts of the Apostles book and surprised at how interesting the stories are.

What have I been doing other than reading books? Well with the extra time from not having to write on here, I've been trying to finish video games (currently near the end of Final Fantasy XV), playing video games with the kids/family (Stardew Valley is a great local co-op family game), helping the kids get better at baseball, catching up to TV shows (Jack Reacher is pretty good), taking longer naps, and many more.

So that's what I've been up to recently. Before I end this post, I also wanted to cover other things that I wrote about on this journal, namely Digital Gardens and my note-taking practice.

I'm still using Obsidian to take down notes. In fact it is still my primary note-taking app and that probably won't change for the foreseeable future.

I still have a Digital Garden, if having a collection of linked notes is what's considered one. But I don't subscribe to the idea of planting seeds or growing trees to grow my digital garden. If anything, what I used to call my Digital Garden, is now really just a personal knowledge base or a second brain. It is a repository of everything I've read and noted down, available for me to reference when I need to.

I also no longer follow the Zettelkasten way of taking down notes. I simply could not keep up. I do not have the mental bandwidth at night, nor do I have the time to go through my notes without burning out. That said, I've taken some practices that worked for me and simplified it.

I still do a daily log or what they call fleeting notes, and I still do a reference or literature note when reading a book. But I don't spend time processing notes the Zettelkasten way. I will link notes under a specific theme and leave it at that.

Taking a page from James Clear (author of Atomic Habits), my bare minimum requirement for my notes are, that they are in digital form and that they are searchable. And since I use Obsidian for note-taking, searching notes is easy. Storing notes in a text file with support for using Markdown is just icing on the cake.

So now we get to why I haven't been posting on here.

I mentioned above that I had a variety of reasons for not posting, but in this update I want to cover just one: I avoided writing on this blog because it was stressing me out.

Back in 2023-08-01, I ran into the Living a Simple and Quiet Christian Life video by Alex Wilson. Watching that video forced me to re-evaluate my online activities. It changed my perspective on blogging, especially blogging under your real name. Regarding this blog specifically, that same day I wrote this down on my bullet journal:

I don't want the fame and recognition. I mean yes, I want a little of it, but I don't want all of it. If I'm being honest with myself, I'm actually scared of the attention, the popularity, the fame. I think it is the source of stress on my websites/blogs where I don't hide behind a pseudonym or an anonymous persona.

Maybe it's time for Dino's Journal to come to an end.

This is not the first time that’s happened. I’ve always just pushed through after a short break. But I’m also aware of the fact that I keep running into this issue over and over. When I was going through my digital declutter, I was at peace, because I didn’t have to worry about what I’m writing on this blog. After my digital declutter ended, the thought of writing something for this specific blog/journal was stressing me out instead of bringing me relief.

And so that's why I haven't posting on here.

And this is why, on a number occasions before, during and after my digital declutter, I have contemplated bringing this blog/journal to a close. It’s not that I have ran out of things to share or write about. It’s just that, I felt so much peace not having to worry about something I wrote in this blog, or what I will write for this blog.

So does this mean this blog/journal is coming to an end? Sort of. This will most likely be my last post on here. I'm not deleting this blog/journal, but I most likely won't be publishing new content either.

I'm also not planning to abandon Write.as. I still have a number of other blogs on this platform and I plan to keep posting to those for the foreseeable future.

They say people start writing to a journal when they're going through something important in their lives. I guess that journey for me has come to an end, this journal has served its purpose.

I appreciate everyone who've taken the time to read my posts on this journal. It has been a blast. Thanks for reading and peace be with you all!

Tags: #SiteUpdates #Reflection #Blogging #DigitalDeclutter #DigitalGarden #NoteTaking #Zettelkasten #TheEnd