I’ve come across the idea of digital gardens a few times in the last year. From this great introduction to the concept:
Think of it as a spectrum. Things we dump into private WhatsApp group chats, DMs, and cavalier Tweet threads are part of our chaos streams - a continuous flow of high noise / low signal ideas. On the other end we have highly performative and cultivated artefacts like published books that you prune and tend for years.
Gardening sits in the middle. It’s the perfect balance of chaos and cultivation.
Even though this blog is not even close to a digital garden, I try to strike this balance when I post something here. I don’t want my posts to be completely polished products but I do want to put some effort into them. These blog posts represent me in the virtual world to a certain extent, especially because I’m not active on the standard social media platforms. On the other hand, I need these posts to have a certain amount of fluency and fluidity.
It’s not a satisfying solution to the blogification of the web. However, keeping these considerations in mind when posting your writing to the web is a good place to start.