Why Start Again? On Cycles, Beginnings, and the Art of Returning

It can be easy to forget. Or rather, we can easily become overwhelmed and our private notes can be disregarded with the priorities and obligations life throws at us.

Learning in public, writing in public, and [writing to learn](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/585474.Writing_to_Learn) — all mean that the work is done in such a way that it is, by default, easily accessible. To publicly document a journey means to have a place where you can return to easily. When your notes live in private Notion databases or scattered across Obsidian vaults, they become archaeology. When they live on your blog, they become reference material.

I will confess there was a good month or two that I was totally obsessed with personal knowledge management systems and note-taking. With the idea of having the most ideal system for my writing and keeping track of everything. I researched [Zettelkasten](https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/), compared [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) versus [Logseq](https://logseq.com/), agonized over folder structures and linking strategies.

Those were some of my least productive months, writing-wise.

Because it is asking and answering the wrong question. It is the equivalent to trying to figure out what the most ideal vessel would be to collect the most rain instead of just finding water. Droughts happen if you aren't careful. You can spend so long optimizing the system that you forget to actually use it for the work it's meant to support.

I do have a [personal knowledge management system](https://fortelabs.com/) now that I've been writing so much, and it's actually a total mess. I need to better organize my notes, fix the tag hierarchy, consolidate duplicates, archive the dead projects. But it is in a good enough place. Because what matters is I can pull what I need to pull when I write. The system serves the writing, not the other way around.

## Blogging as Container

I think blog posts are wonderful because they are neat containers. You can fit a specific concept, a specific thesis unto them and you will be easily reminded whether you already wrote on a topic or not. That doesn't mean you can't write on the same thing multiple times, I've written about [the current state of the internet](https://blog.brennan.day/the-current-state-of-the-internet-should-terrify-you-37909d4417b9) and [AI's mediocrity problem](https://blog.brennan.day/the-piss-average-problem-ec2a2dd6f5ad) from different angles, for example. But rather that you can avoid reinventing the wheel for yourself. You can build on previous thinking instead of starting from scratch every time.

Each blog post becomes a node in your thinking, a waypoint you can return to. [As I wrote about in my essay on *mise en place* for writers](https://blog.brennan.day/mise-en-place-for-wr