This Week in Recalibrating: A New Chapter

Welcome to Cultivating 🌱, a new segment of the Recalibrating Newsletter 🧭🧠✨

While I have had an incredible time building up Recalibrating over the last year, I have realized that long-form (3000-6000 word) blog posts are not sustainable for me to write every week while I build out the rest of my ecosystem. I think this depth is necessary to adequately cover deep and complicated topics, but I'm expanding to making more videos and that has been taking up much of my blog-writing time.

I have also received feedback that my readers that, while you enjoy the depth of my long-form writing, you would also like shorter snippets of insight between long-form posts; a more digestible format.

Cultivating is my solution 🌱

My long-form writing, Recalibrating, is not something spontaneous, but is the result of hours & hours of cultivating my second brain, my Personal Knowledge Management system in Obsidian. Cultivating Knowledge.

Every day (almost), I write notes in Obsidian as I read & research, as I learn. I track my thoughts, knowledge, and ideas, noting them in my digital mind, planting seeds. Over time, I cultivate these seeded learnings with time, attention, and energy, growing them into trees and occasionally producing fruit (Recalibrating Entries).

Rather than keeping my thoughts, knowledge, and ideas private until they are "perfected" for publishing, I rather thought it would be nice to share snippets of insights as I learn, in public. That way, you can learn as I learn ✨

The Internet Information Spectrum

I believe that the Scarcity Mindset of the physical realm has impacted the Age of Abundance on the Internet, causing us to hoard knowledge, wisdom, and ideas rather than share them in public.

As a result, we experience imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and overall publishing fear that prevents us from "speaking" in public, online. When we overcome this publishing fear, we are quickly burnt out by the inhuman algorithms that control the "feed" of information to our networks. Lose-lose.

My goal with Cultivating, and this digital garden generally, is to help people learn how to express themselves in public, without resorting to the unbearable whims of inhuman algorithms.

A place to plant seeds of thought, knowledge, and ideas that can be cultivated over time, at my own pace, while teaching you how you can do the same (if you wish).

As you can see in the image below, Maggie Appleton has outlined (very well in my opinion) the various information flows we have in society:

1. Chaos Streams (Timeline/Feeds)

2. Digital Gardens (Non-Linear Learning in Public)

3. Cultivated Performance (Linearly Edited & Finalized Outputs)

My digital garden will include thoughts, knowledge, and ideas that have been cultivated to the point they are ready to be shared in public (a low bar), without fear of imposter syndrome or perfectionism that is typically associated with long-form writing.

Learning & Building In Public

I align with Anne-Laure Le Cunff's idea that to learn in public is to build in public.

As I keep my finger on the pulse of social, intellectual, technological, and creator economy issues in the world, I take notes on what resonates with me. I capture these thoughts, ideas, and knowledge in Obsidian.

When I return to these notes to organize and distill them, if there is a chance that they may provide value or help to others, I take a brief amount of time to cultivate & publicly express them so they can be immediately available for all. I use my Personal Knowledge Management system for Smart Note Taking.

In other words, I publish them to Wanderloots' Words, my digital garden 🌱🌳🍎

These notes include an indication of their growth level; how much they have been cultivated. You can read more about growth levels in my Mind Garden Legend (how this system works).

Today in the Garden: A Cultivated Digest 🌱🌳🍎

As part of my digital garden, I thought it would be fun to keep track of the notes I am adding (the seeds I am planting) and how they are being cultivated over time.

To this end, I will include a section in Cultivating on my garden's recent growth that shows my 10 most recently edited & published notes.

I will then include commentary on why I added these notes, providing additional insights on the timeliness and thematic connections between them.

I hope that this digest will help you learn about a variety of topics, while keeping the themes sufficiently flexible that I can go with my own flow of learning.

The major themes will include:

1. Art & Travel

2. Mind & Well-Being

3. Emerging Technology

4. Creativity & Knowledge Work

5. Sources - Books & Articles

DIY & Multi-Player Mode

If you are interested in learning more about digital gardens, I made a YouTube video that goes into more detail on the benefits & philosophy of digital gardening (currently my fastest growing YouTube video of all time 👀)

This playlist also includes a tutorial on How to Publish Obsidian Notes Website For Free (digital garden or blog) ⤵️

Let me know if you end up building your own digital garden and I will add you to my Ongoing List of Digital Gardens and allow you to join wander, the Farcaster channel.

My goal is to build a multi-player mode for digital gardens so we can cultivate and cross-pollinate thoughts, knowledge, and ideas in a sustainable and organic way 🌱

The Wander Channel is a place to wander the worlds we're building so we can learn and grow together ✨

A Glimpse Of Growth

My hope & plan is to publish updates more regularly as I wander through my digital garden, cultivating as I go. This entry was meant to be an explanation of my current plan, but of course, as with all of my writing, the format will be be recalibrated over time ✨

Next time, I plan on filling out my My Obsidian Starter Kit and see ing how my garden grows from that 👀

If there is anything you're interested in diving deeper into, please let me know, and I will expand the paths in the garden 🫡

Each link in the table below can be considered an entry point, or starting point, in my digital garden. Each link will take you to a path that is woven throughout the rest of my garden 🌱

Here's a glimpse into the garden's recent growth:

Thanks for reading! I'll see you next time ✨

Callum
wanderloots.eth

P.S.
Enjoying these weekly explorations? Consider supporting my own growth by subscribing to the Recalibrating Newsletter or the Recalibrating Hypersub.

Word of mouth is by far the best way I will ever grow, so please also consider sharing this newsletter with a friend 😊

Thank you for being a part of this journey!

Hope to see you in /wander

Image Prompt in Firefly:
a cozy hut in a garden under the night sky with the stars connected like nodes in a geometric waveform pattern

The cover art is also collectible on Paragraph.xyz or Zora:
Collectible Token on Zora: