Hi. My Name is Shay and I'm am a digital archivist. Or so I think. For the last month or so, I've been Brainstorming and SelfTalking about project planning, ToDos, and information archiving. I've been trying out, again, different applications and platforms. Some I tried for a day or two, some I just bit into and spat out, leaving behind a trail of semi-eaten productivity muffins. It's not the first time, or the second, or the third, this happens. As a matter of fact, my partners agree that I "live my life through apps" and they gave up keeping up with me, even though I seemed to have calmed down quite a bit recently. I have, partly because of TW and partly because of my demanding job in IT, which often bites into my late afternoons and weekends and leave me too drained to deal with even more digital information at home.
TW has been a rock in a stormy sea of apps. It's been the one constant software where I keep the most information about myself and what I do. Never before I had such a rich place that save so much of my own information, not even my handwritten journals (since journaling in itself used to be a part of TW, now separated). If I had to guess what's at the heart of the restlessness of looking for other things (besides the fact that I probably have some form of ADD or another, this is also from other tell-tell signs and self-observation), it's the fact that I can't use it for *everything. *For example, a big chunk of functionality is missing because I can't use it on my phone. Yes, I know of the Android app, and I also think it's terrible next to the "real thing"- mostly because the phone, for me, is no place to sit down and write informative tiddlers with all that they require (Linux script to auto-resize and manipulate images so they fit well in tiddlers; tabs open of different topics and things I'm looking into, including this group; endless river of tiddlers reflecting on topic at hand; my journal...). It has never been a good ToDo list tool for me as a result, and, while a great place to *save *information, I find it rather inadequate in *capturing *information quickly and in raw form, something I usee Google Keep and the like right now. This I write not as a form of criticism or as a statement of problems with it, no. It is simply me mentioning what it can't do for me, just like you can't expect a big car to be good to travel in small always. It's not meant for it. It will get stuck and ruined. But like Rome, I find peace in the notion that all roads lead to TiddlyWiki. By that I mean, no matter how I capture information, it always ends in TW -- edited and formatted and *organized* correctly. I just wish I could get to it - and to my peace of mind - more often. TW takes time, it takes sitting down on your behind, sorting through the journal, bits of notes, sometimes even physical paper (I also use OneNote at work as infodump, slowly pulling information from it to my own personal TW). It takes work: mental stamina and time which I too often find that I don't have enough. But, when I do sit down and "translate" something from say work to TiddlyWiki-ish, explaining a problem in a third-person and breaking it down to its part, I really find that I enjoy myself. I sometimes catch myself hum doing it, then look at my work, and whisper "There. Now it's written like it should." There's nothing quite like it. Here, in this group, I find people who understand how this feels. This is why I'm writing this long post. The sense of community here, unknown to the most of the world, connected by the love of sorting out information, a bunch of us geeks sit around and tell each other TW stories around our digital campfire. There are few other areas in my life that are somewhat similar to me, where I feel kind of at home. Not once have I wondered, how come is it that this one app has been around so long, in this form, and it's still such a sweet secret very few will ever know. I think I'm actually learning to like it. It's likely if you read this post, you'd want to suggest tools you use. Perhaps DoItNow right here in TW, perhaps some app out there like Todoist or TaskWarrior (depends on your preference), but trust me when I say, I think I tested them all. My list of apps here is probably around 50 different names and titles. Don't feed my obsession. Instead, I'd really like to hear your stories again. These always inspire me the most. How have you been using TiddlyWiki? What's your style? How do you sort information and how do you organize your ToDos in a way that makes sense to you? If your TW is something you can share, please do! I'd love to see it. If not, don't worry about it. Ideally I'd like to collect these stories in - where else - my own TW. Thank you for reading. I hope it was somewhat enjoyable... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/6a6efa5a-58f9-4e1a-b375-ab403cf78a60%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
