Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, Tokyo, Japan
often when i find myself feeling kind of bad i'll reflect on the last couple weeks of my life / and the first question i will ask of those last couple weeks is "did i write anything?" and the answer is almost always "no"
Hi friends! It’s been a while since I’ve posted something on Substack. I missed yall 
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The weekly newsletter returns! on a Friday of course, in typical Whimsical Wednesdays fashion. It’s coming back with roughly the same size and shape of content, but with one very, very big difference—
I’ve found a new home for my writing.
In the midst of work and travel and generally spending time in good company throughout March and April, I found some breathing room to reflect upon the outsized role of writing and creating— especially in public, on the internet— on the past few years of my life.
I’ve realized that my absolute favorite way to spend time (outside of sleeping, of course) is to make and share things with the world. There are endless ways to create— music and code and art and video games and film— and so much more. I hope I’ll be able to explore all of them at some point my life!
Ever since its inception, my Substack was intended to be an experiment to try out writing as one of those creative outlets. I’ve since cemented it as my favorite make-and-share-things method (such low friction!! keyboard go brrr!). Though I still have so much to learn about writing as a craft, it’s become my default launchpad for a wide variety of creative work. Thinking in writing is so real, and so powerful.
But something still felt slightly off about how I approached writing. Over the course of April I posed a few critiques for myself, in an attempt to clarify this feeling:
- How can I write more sustainably? Despite trying out a pretty relentless weekly schedule (and staying up to ungodly hours on many Tuesday nights), I felt an ever-growing delta between all the things trapped in my head and the amount I was able to get them out into real words. Writing more made me feel more cluttered, which is the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to achieve when done well.
- How can I create a space that lets me grow and experiment more freely? While having a way to release content via an email blast is wonderful for accountability, I feel restricted from sending small, incomplete thoughts frequently. And once a post is out, I have to make another one to update it- which results in a lot of friction and throwaway prose when revisiting older ideas.
- How can I start branching out into other modes of creation, while still writing as a default? Every social media platform has a culture around what it encourages its users to share: vertical videos go to TikTok; fun garageband music to Soundcloud; vibey blog-essays to Substack; epic top 10 chess montages to YouTube. Though many content creators navigate the tides, it’s truly a full-time job keeping up with all of it, and adjusting what I create to the norms of a big platform feels inauthentic at times.
By the time May rolled around, I felt like I was ready to spend a whole month to attempt to turn my loose ideas into a real thing.
6 weeks, 29,845 words and 119 code commits later, I’m incredibly excited to share it with you on this fine Friday morning. The vibes have been so good thus far, and I’m ready to officially open the gates.
Welcome to the Garden!
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
Ready to wander around with me? Head over to garden.bencuan.me when you are :)
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 guarantees on 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 here on Substack. You’re welcome to subscribe by using the box below if you’d like to be notified of future newsletter entries :)
SUBSCRIBE BUTTON!
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.
Here’s some further reading about some concepts mentioned in this post. I really, really enjoyed reading these and hope you will as well!
- A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden (by Maggie Appleton): the best place to start if you’re looking to jump down the digital garden rabbit hole.
- Websites as homes (by Jacky Zhao): the reason why I redesign my website every year
- My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be? (by Laurel Schwulst): physical metaphors for digital spaces
- The Need to Read (by Paul Graham): a very concise argument for why writing (and thinking in writing) is necessary
- Epistemic statuses are lazy, and that is a good thing (by Devon Zuegel): how to post incomplete thoughts without fear of misinterpretation.
- Sharing Your Work Is Like Lifting With Your Legs (by Devon Zuegel): a more brief and immediately-relevant version of one of my [favorite essays](# A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox) by Henrik Karlsson
- Digital Garden Terms of Service (by swyx): a sketch of expectations for visitors and creators of digital gardens
- Taking an Internet Walk (by Spencer Chang and Kristoffer Tjalve): on the importance of local internet communities
Hope to be back with more next week! I’m glad you’re here. Don’t be shy and reach out if you want to keep in touch, my inbox will always be open :)
-bencuan