I don’t think a video can be more in my wheelhouse than this one. A few years old, but just perfect.

A recent Van Neistat video about perfectionism got me thinking about how how I fall into that trap sometimes, specifically with this blog. I haven’t thought about it too much, but maybe it’s not even about reaching perfection, but simply trying to avoid embarrassment.

Before social media took over the world, having a blog was a lot more useful than it is now. For example, when we moved from Minnesota to California I wanted a way to stay in touch with family and friends in a way that didn’t include writing the same basic e-mail over and over. So I started a blog and posted some pictures, sharing short anecdotes about what we were up to. I don’t think I ever had more than a couple family members actually read anything, but it served its purpose and I learned some things about web development. I didn’t worry about creating anything great – it was simply used as a record of what was going on. Now that social media has kind of filled this need, you gotta wonder why anyone these days wants to have a blog. I mean, there are still great blogs out there – I visit kottke, Swiss Miss, Daring Fireball, and others frequently. But for nobodies like me, what’s the point?

Here’s why I do it:

1. It’s fun to work on
2. It’s nice to have a personal hub of sorts (e.g., for posting links to social media accounts or to create long-form posts about trips or projects, etc.)
3. It helps improve my thinking and, hopefully, my writing (though this might be up for debate)

Spending a few hours trying to fix a CSS problem I barely understand, while maybe strange for some, for me is an enjoyable way to spend an evening. The same goes for experimenting with different typefaces and layouts as well as learning enough Liquid to get the tags page in alphabetical order. I also like having a place to post interesting links or long-form writing, that I control 100%.

This is all well and good, but with a web site like this you quickly hit an issue: you need raw material (aka “content”) to actually make the site work. So you need to write stuff, which is where most of the problems surface.

As mentioned above, I’m definitely not doing this for “the views.” It’s basically a personal journal, written exclusively by me, and pretty much only for me. It just so happens to have a more “interesting-to-work-on” presentation layer. However, it’s also different than a journal because I know for certain no one will ever read my journal. And while it’s unlikely anyone will ever read this blog, it’s not impossible.

The point I’m trying to get to here is that there’s zero pressure to write anything decent with a private journal; as a result, it’s way easier. I can sit down and churn out a bunch of random, messy thoughts and it doesn’t matter – I can be more creative and take more risks with what I write about. When it comes to blogging, though, I put a certain amount of pressure on myself to create things that are more insightful and/or polished. (Or, at the very least, not complete shit.) I start spiraling in this negative headspace, doubting everything and ultimately wondering what I’m even doing. The internal hit, “Stop this, you’re embarassing yourself” is on endless repeat.

Is this a rational voice editing my life and saving me from endless embarrassment? Or is it the “cowardice of perfectionism” preventing me from starting? What about Steven Pressfield’s Resistance, which is something I should ignore and power through? I’m not sure, but I know it has a chilling effect and tends to prevent me from trying things, not only on this silly blog, but sometimes also out in the real world.

One glimmer of hope here is that as you get older you realize, for better or worse, that everyone is obsessed with their own situations and the importance you’re placing on what others think is generally misguided. While I do feel that striving to create awesome things is worthwhile, there’s also certain contexts where Neistat’s “good enough” is a worthy goal.

How does this relate to this blog? Well, I’m trying to create more and not get so caught up in whether or not any of it is worthwhile. Simply put, creating a web site and writing stuff for it makes me feel good. I’m creating this for my future self, as I always enjoy looking back on the things I’ve written, even if they are somewhat cringe-worthy. This is a reminder to that future self, when he’s doubting everything, to lower the bar and treat this more as a messy, informal “weblog” rather than something that needs to be perfect.

In the middle of February I decided I finally wanted to start learning Swift so I could someday create macOS and/or iOS apps. I went to the Swift subreddit and started poking around, trying to figure out the best place to start. The free 100 days of Swift online course was on the top of the recommended list for noobs so that’s what I started.

As I write this I’m currently on day 23 of the course and so far it’s been a lot of fun. The first 15 days were a crash-course in the basics of the Swift language. I wouldn’t call myself a developer, but over the years I’ve written quite a few Python, Ruby, Bash, and Powershell scripts so I’m familiar with programming constructs like variables, arrays, conditionals, loops, functions, classes, etc. While the concepts in the first couple weeks weren’t all new, there were a few things that were, such as protocols, extensions, optionals, and, to some degree, closures. And since I’m 100% new to Swift, all the implementation details were something I had to learn. At any rate, those first couple weeks were a nice way to get started and get back in the programming mindset.

I was honestly a little worried about the switch to SwiftUI, which is the newest user interface framework for Swift. All of the programming I’ve ever really done (except web sites) has been on console apps (i.e, command-line programs) so I don’t have experience creating full-blown GUIs. It’s been really fun, though, learning how SwiftUI works. I’m only a few lessons in, however, so just scratching the surface at this point. I’ve come across some questions and answers on Stack Exchange that tell me there’s a lot of complexity lurking around the corner. But, I’m doing this for fun so will take it slow and enjoy the trip. Definitely more to come on this as I progress through the course.

Kottke posted a video on Dutch street design, which can be filed under “one more thing Americans can’t seem to figure out.”

Related: this article from Business Insider concludes that, contrary to many people’s preconceptions, “complete streets” are actually good for business.

I’ve read every study and report I could find that looked specifically at the economics of bike lanes since 1984 — 32 research articles, to be exact. The results show that making streets friendlier for bikes — and sidewalks friendlier for pedestrians — is actually good for business. The rise of “complete streets” and “road diets,” as urban planners call them, has been a huge boon to businesses in cities.

There was a Black Friday sale on Day One last November so I pulled the trigger and thought I’d give daily journaling a go. I’ve been dabbling with journaling for a while and have even used daily notes in Obsidian periodically. But the habit never stuck. I also had this weird thing where I was tracking some basic info like workouts and the day’s highlights in a paper-based notebook. Anyway, I was hoping to start a new habit that would help me both clear my head in the morning and perhaps even get a little better at writing. Plus, I figured I might be able to use it to track the things I was with my paper-based journal so I could get rid of that.

I used Day One for a month and overall liked it. It got me in the habit of writing each morning, even if it was mostly just a messy stream-of-consciousness. But I kept having this nagging thought: I didn’t want to spend time and effort putting my data in an app I didn’t really control. I wrote a little about this kind of lock in before when I was just starting to use Obsidian. I knew Day One wasn’t as open as Obsidian, but was hopeful it’s export options would work for me and the potential for data lock-in would be offset by the slick UI. However, I quickly found the Markdown export doesn’t really work, at least when it comes to exporting an entry’s media. I talked to support about it and they said they had to remove the feature that linked pictures, videos, and audio to an entry because it was buggy. So while you can export your entries in Markdown, you effectively lose any pictures, videos, or audio clips in those entries.

All this got me thinking more and more about what Steph Ango calls “file over app” and I realized I needed to make Obsidian work for my journaling since not only does it store data as simple text files, it’s also where I keep all my other notes/information.

The main problem I was having with Obsidian’s daily note feature, though, is it names the notes after the date they are created (e.g., “2024-01-02”) and doesn’t really provide any other means of identifying them. So if you look at the folder containing your daily notes all you see are a bunch of dates – you have no idea what happened on a particular day without opening the file and reading it.

The thing I really like about Day One is that you’re able to easily see your journal entries and quickly revisit them if something catches your eye. As mentioned, Obsidian’s daily notes are the opposite and quickly turn into a long list of indistinguishable file names that make revisiting them cumbersome at best. I needed to find a better way of handling this and think I have using Dataview.

In short Dataview allows you to query standard, text-based notes much like you can a database. You can create a query based on tags, file names, folders, or other pieces of metadata and it will create links to matching files dynamically. I was able to use Dataview to create a dashboard of sorts for my daily journal. I can display links to all my entries and show the date, the title, the workout I did that day, my weight, what we watched at night, or any other data I’m tracking. Of course, since all of this is in Obsidian I can also link journal entries to other related notes and keep all of my writing in a single app. And, as mentioned, all of these notes are simple text files that live on my local hard drive (and iCloud).