Welcome to Weekly Wonderings, a newsletter exploring Digital Self-Actualization, > realizing our meaningful potential through the synthesis of digital tools, life management systems, and humanistic philosophies I hope my 3-week hiatus here can be justified with some cool sneak peeks on what I've been working on 🙇‍♀️ Here's a quick galactic overview of this edition: - [[#Creating a powerful zettelkasten setup with Obsidian ⚡️]] - [[#A free, highly customizable place for sharing your second brain 🧠]] - [[#Joining my first Linking Your Thinking Workshop ✍️]] - [[#Bringing my 3D virtual self to life 🤩]] - [[#Appreciating the social beacon of authenticity 🚨]] - [[#My new shining stars 🌟]] - [[#(Recording) How I process fleeting notes 🍃]] ## Creating a powerful zettelkasten setup with Obsidian ⚡️ A fellow creator recently created a video showing a full guide on how [[My Resources/Obsidian|Obsidian]] is the "king of learning tools", sharing how he uses it with the [[Zettelkasten]] method. And upon first glance, I believe the video is quite helpful for people starting to use Obsidian! Odysseas does a good job explaining the benefits of the zettelkasten, creating a simple system ready for use in a space where other videos like mine using a lot of Obsidian plugins and systems might be too complicated for the average use case. But when watching the video myself with my 3 years of Obsidian obsession for the same reason, I was underwhelmed by his guide. I felt like his advice was outdated, oversimplified, and didn't showcase obsidian's unique potential as a learning tool in comparison to other apps. But at the end of the day it does work for him and majority of people feeling overwhelmed from starting. Alongside other personal questions on self-education as a whole, you can see my suggestions for enhancing the setup in the video below (which also has a free download for the template!) https://youtu.be/4VxZCngq0dM?si=Bz5nU8swtvC3VKN3 But beyond the video itself, I had a deeper learning experience. A mix of envy from Odysseas's video's virality, justice for wanting to show the more advanced zettelkasten setup Obsidian is truly capable of, advocating for [[Collective learning pursuit]] due to my own existential explorations on [[How to be a credible creator]], and my experimentation with expressing personal thoughts beyond just retention-optimized videos led me to be more critical of the creator. When determining what thumbnail and title to use, I ended up getting inspiration from Coffeezilla thumbnails, a Youtuber known for exposing large financial scams from other creators... definitely not the most welcoming way to mention someone in your video 😭 I even had a chat with Aidan prior saying I wasn't going to make the thumbnail I did. But after manically working on the video during Saturday, I changed my mind last-second and believed it was the best way to package the video for reach and impact. In red highlighted text, I accused him of being a learning fraud. I thought to myself, *If he's playing the Youtube game, surely I can do the same?* After scheduling it for upload I went to sleep satisfied with my efforts and self-expression, expecting people to appreciate my criticisms upon waking up. But when I went to check the following day, I felt an immediate sense of panic. Almost all comments were calling me out for my extreme thumbnail. Some were just shallow comments just expressing hate that didn't elaborate beyond when I had asked them to, but there were also ones of rational disapproval. It was my first taste of mass audience rejection beyond the occasional comments I get about my Vtuber or channel aesthetic 😅 Fast forward to today, and I've focused on the zettelkasten part of the video without much emphasis on the critique on self-education. I do still believe strongly in the ideas I mention in the video so I don't plan on taking it down, but it's been quite the food for thought for how I can continue to reflect upon what videos I want to make and why I would do so. As much as sensationalism, controversy, or being authoritative may bring in views and initial intention, I don't think it's worth compromising my values or nitpicking people who ultimately have good intentions. I don't know if I could nurture a community that consistently expects that perspective or energy. In the future, a healthier balance for the title/thumbnail is what i'll need to experiment with to make it not as extreme in the future while still having that emotional reaction to get people to pay attention. It's also interesting to personally decide how I should determine "success" for the video, which has been a glimpse into detaching from broader outcomes to prioritize making the videos that myself and my social circle would appreciate. Discussion and appreciation from people like close friends and other creatives has overshadowed the more hollow complaints I've received. I can be open-minded with feedback but at the end of the day I can't please everyone's tastes or beliefs. Most of the criticisms I made were formed due to my extensive use of Obsidian and because of trying to be a credible creator myself, and there's only a small sample of viewers who would be able to look at it from the same lens. But that's enough of a monologue, here's some of the cool ideas and notes I've been nurturing 🤩 ## In My Life ✨ ### A free, highly customizable place for sharing your second brain 🧠 For the past month I've been working on a highly-customized [[Quartz Publish]] website for [[Linking Your Thinking]]. The customization potential with my front-end development knowledge makes the possibilities borderline limitless and I'm SUPER excited to see how I can truly bring my digital galaxy to life to complement my Vtuber progress as well 😊 Once I get it up and running [[LYT Blog]] I'll probably start working on mine when I start doing streams :) Here's some sneak peeks on what it looks like:  - In-progress home page  - A customized view for blogs  - A customized view for maps of content ### Joining my first Linking Your Thinking Workshop ✍️ Today will mark my first week of my participation in [[Writing Original Works LYT Workshop]] 🥳 Despite not considering myself to be a writer, my attempt to be more mindful of not creating shallow content for the sake of Youtube optimization was intrigued by the workshop's emphasis on [[Originality]]. It's empowering to see how the whole LYT workshop team's engagement encourages "leaning forward" to allow for a deep inner transformation in this learning experience. With the non-judgmental space they advocate for through the onboarding, core values and inviting Circle community experience, I finally why people find the LYT community to be special ☺️ Beyond temporary motivation, there's a sense of inner realization and lasting identity change after each session. I wish this learning experience and environment was the standard in most classrooms. In my years of university I would overlook people's diverse perspectives, but now with my personal transformation I've realized it's where I can find the most food for thought for my own personal growth. If you're interested in some of the ideas and notes from the sessions, you can check that out in my note of the workshop above! I think my biggest takeaway has been taking their "Creators Codex" quiz (which you can see my results for in [[Creators Codex]]) which helps you be more aware of your bottlenecks when it comes to publishing. By having some framework to refer to when seeking room for improvement in my writing workflow or knowing what to reflect upon. ### Bringing my 3D virtual self to life 🤩 Experimenting with an almost-finished 3D Vtuber model in preparation for making more talking-head style videos (and am also potentially hiring a video editor for that as well!) Fortunately for me there's a free spaceship environment highly relevant to my idea of Obsidian being your spacecraft for navigating your [[Digital Galaxy]], so I'm excited to think of the different ways. This is going to be a huge learning journey as I'll have to learn how to leverage this new medium for videos and streaming (learning the software, lighting, camera movements, importing and creating assets, scripting), but I feel this will truly unlock the capacity for promoting PKM and Obsidian to a broader demographic in a compelling way 😁 You can get a sneak peek at one of my test b-roll at: https://x.com/johnmavrickVT/status/1792100981448327485 ### Appreciating the social beacon of authenticity 🚨 [[Appreciating the social beacon of authenticity]] ## My new shining stars 🌟 _A place to share the new stars and constellations inside my digital galaxy_ ### Inputs I went on a huge Danny Hatcher binge as I explore [[Ecological Psychology]]: - [[Why I am against Atomic Notes and Mini-Essays]] - With a lot of creators advocating for atomic essays in their videos, I enjoy Danny's contrarian view on exploring cases where it might not be the most effective or beneficial PKM approach. - [[This approach to psychology changed my life (Ecological Psychology)]] - A very insightful introduction to a cognitive theory I deeply resonate with. I feel there can be huge connections with neurodiversity, being a generalist, Obsidian, meta-learning, the pathless path, and awakening from the meaning crisis that would be a very fun thing to explore. To slowly get back into my goal of reading and taking notes on 26 books, I've started to process my highlights from reading [[Range Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World]]. You can see which notes exist at [[Range Application]] ! To cross-pollinate related ideas, I'm also reading: - [[The Extended Mind]] - [[Get Better at Anything]] - And eventually, How We Learn to Move ### Notes - [[Against entertainment content for educational creators]] - The power of a [[Constraints-led approach]] for learning new things - [[What jobs will be replaced by AI]] - [[GPT 4o]] can be the start of human-like AI interactions thanks to the voice's emotional variability and multi-modal inputs 🤯 - I'm really curious to see how this can enhance self-learning as seen by the Khan academy demo video on it. - [[School does not promote rationality]] ## (Recording) How I process fleeting notes 🍃 To continue creating more demonstration videos on how I use my second brain setup, I've created one for when I had to process 3 days worth of [[Fleeting Notes]] 😅 You can watch my by visiting the [Ko-fi post](https://ko-fi.com/post/My-first-video-example-on-how-I-process-fleeting-n-N4N4YB6L1?justpublished=true&alias=My-first-video-example-on-how-I-process-fleeting-n-N4N4YB6L1#shareNewPostModal) with the video ! I'm also open to any feedback to better explain my thought process when making these kinds of recordings. ![[Newsletter footer]]