Two A.M. Thoughts is for me to enjoy. Don’t worry, it’ll be here for you too, but this is my space to build for me and my thoughts.
Digital gardens
Tanya Basu’s (2020) article for MIT Technology Review discussed this idea of the “digital garden”—the reimagination of your typical blog into a creation of your own—and I am here for the conversation.
As she explains, digital gardens cover a variety of topics and are always changing according to your personal growth, learning, and development. It’s nothing like the traditional social media-style blog that’s cookie-cutter and predictable. Instead, it reflects who the author is for their own enjoyment—not necessarily for the sole enjoyment of others or for publicity.
A mental note: A digital garden is NOT a blog
It must be made clear, however, that a digital garden is NOT a blog, nor are they a social media platform. To put it simply, blogging entails talking to a large audience. Meanwhile, digital gardening involves talking to yourself.
Yes, they can both be edited and tweaked whenever to demonstrate this aspect of growth. Though, keep in mind that a digital garden excels as a source on atopic. It isn’t supposed to be the one-and-only source on thetopic.
Cultivating my own garden
Now, Two A.M. Thoughts is technically considered a blog. Though, with this concept of the digital garden in mind, I like to think of this site as a hint of that. It’s a space for me to talk to myself in the very early hours of the morning, but it still has room to grow in terms of its digital space.
On top of this, I am no expert on anything that I discuss. Rather, I think about the big and little things that I can’t quite get my mind off during the middle of the night and rant as if nobody’s watching. It’s my “own weird thing” as Appleton (as cited in Basu, 2020) would probably describe it.
My most recent post on getting my priorities figured out is a sample of me working through everything going through my mind. In essence, it covers a short and sweet list of six things I had been doing in the two hours leading up to me writing.
I will say that while I like writing out lists like in the post I had just mentioned, I want to write more as if I’m having a conversation with me. Lists and whatnot are great for readers who like to get to the heart of the content in very little time, but that’s not necessarily what I want to convey to myself.
What I have in the works is great for a blog. However, I want to treat these more like a diary or journal entries (without getting too overly personal and private). No, my content won’t necessarily cater to those looking for a good blog to read but remember that a digital garden is not a blog.
With time, I will figure out this world of the digital garden. For now, I’ll slowly work on shifting the feel of my content toward what I want to read.
References
Basu, T. (2020, September 3). Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/03/1007716/digital-gardens-let-you-cultivate-your-own-little-bit-of-the-internet/
Skip to content
Leave a Reply