Todo

This page is undergoing active development. Introducing the Garden in a concise manner is a daunting task, and this will do for now :)

Welcome to the Garden!!

glad to have you here  I’m sure you have some questions about what this website is about and why I’m spending so much time cultivating it, so here’s a little intro guide for new visitors!

Our digital artifacts and spaces are reflections of our real selves. We feel like we outgrow digital spaces just as we change, learn, and grow in real life.

—Websites as Homes, Jacky Zhao

The term “digital garden” is a very new phenomenon, yet it already holds a very dear place in my heart. At its core, digital gardening re-frames the role of personal websites on the Internet: as locations that take up space, are hosts of constant change, and homes that reflect who we are online.

I’ve been keeping a digital garden on my local computer as an Obsidian vault for nearly 5 years now. It’s secretly hosted my notes from college, rough drafts of the TurtleNetseries, scrapped blog posts, daily journal entries, and basically every piece of personal writing I’ve typed up. Until now, I’ve resisted the temptation to publish it in its entirety for a couple reasons:

• Throughout college, I found that I preferred taking more structured, linear notes to match the natural progression of course content (see notes.bencuan.me and amethyst). Berkeley classes go way too quickly, and I didn’t have the mental capacity to rearrange the firehose of information coming my way! Unfortunately this kind of goes against the nonlinear and exploratory nature of digital gardening, which is better suited for topics I already understand and are looking to mentally organize.
• As a result of my acquired bias for structure from the above, I kicked off my post-college writing with long-form, self-contained essays. (I was a little tired of note-taking, anyways :P). This first manifested here on Substack, then later (and now) at bencuan.me/blog.

The more I look at it, the more I realize that curating my garden for public consumption is the logical next step. I’m confident enough in my writing process now to experiment with a less organized format, and it provides the ‘everything, but writing-first’ platform I’ve been looking for.

Taking a stroll

I spent a lot of time building a subtly interactive homepage. I wanted to design a space where visitors feel like they can come back again and again to— but days or weeks apart, rather than providing the dopamine rush of an endlessly-refreshing doomscroll.

I also wanted to provide visitors with opportunities to make a small impact of their own. Feel free to click the ‘hey i’m here too!’ button if you like seeing small number go up, or to leave a message in the guestbook.

Although admittedly unimaginative, the imagery of a garden works so well that I just had to roll with it. Plus, the doodles were really fun to draw.

(The emoji collection will continue to grow over time!)

Given how new the Garden is, there’s not a whole lot of real content- yet! I’ve decided to publish the list of writing and other creations I’m working on in a Coming Soon page. As I get around to making a thing, it’ll probably become a note (or even a category!) of its own.

As a note evolves over time, I assign stages to them depending on where they are in their journey.

Growth stages are a very rough way of communicating the epistemic status of notes in the Garden, which span a wide range of correctness, thoughtfulness, and completeness.

All notes are born as sprouts. I make no guarantee on the quality, correctness, or readability of sprouts; they can vary anywhere from 3am insomnia-fueled bullet points to super rough drafts of blog posts to log dumps from a debugging session.

Blossoms are incomplete notes that I believe are ready for initial sharing and public consumption. I’m often looking for feedback or waiting for new information, and intend to iterate on them for some while longer.

Evergreens are completed notes that I don’t intend on editing in the future. They’re generally edited, factually accurate to the best of my knowledge, and presents information in a way that won’t become inaccurate as time passes.

If an evergreen note passes some entirely arbitrary threshold of quality and importance, I may move it away from the Garden and into my blog (bencuan.me/blog). Blog posts are generally well-researched long form essays about topics I care about deeply. By separating them from the Garden I hope to give myself space to play and experiment here, while still having a platform dedicated to the ideas I’m most proud of.

Where to next?

I have so many fun things in the works (see what’s coming soon!) that I hope to share in the coming months. Since my creations will no longer be strictly tied to a weekly release schedule (or writing as a medium), they’ll pop up anytime I have a spare moment to get them started.

Then, once a week, at 9am on Wednesday, I’ll gather my favorite new developments into one big post and send it out as an update on Substack. You’re welcome to subscribe by using the box below if you’d like to be notified of future newsletter entries :)

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re awesome! (And you’re probably looking to explore the Garden further). Here’s a few trailheads to get you started:

• Want more things to read? Check out some Featured posts.
• Here is A list of everywhere I’m on the internet. (and, some Cool places on the internet)
• Want to take a peek behind the scenes? You can read the Garden Design page, or the Build Log for more technical details.

Currently, the Garden hosts notes in several high-level categories.

• The About the Garden section (you are here!) contains meta-notes about how the Garden is configured and designed.
• The Coming Soon section is a catch-all for all of the work-in-progress notes that aren’t quite ready to be consumed by a wide audience.
• The Community section contains reflections on fun things I’ve participated in/organized in the past, and a list of things I want to organize in the future.
• The Homelabbing section contains various guides, learnings, and implementation details from my home server (and sneak peeks of the next season of TurtleNet).
• The Music section contains notes on music production, piano, and music i’m listening to`
• The Internet Trails section contains explorations of the corner of the internet I spend most of my time in.
• The Newsletter section contains mirrors of my weekly Substack posts.

Further Reading

See the Digital Spaces Reading Collection.