Backstory
Today I binge-listened to a podcast called RoamFM, where they bring in guests who are considered stars in the Roam and TfT community.
While my notes are on Obsidian for various reasons, Roam is a note-taking app that I’ve been following closely.
Listening to the podcast, there was something about the zealousness of Roamans (this is what they call themselves) that moved me. There was something about how they described their relationship with their notes which got me swept up in their excitement, but what I noticed more acutely was the absence of this kind of euphoria when I thought about my notes in Obsidian. I mean, I love writing in Obsidian, but this excitement being communicated through the podcast was next level.
After listening to 5 hours of Roam content, I was primed. I decided to finally try Roam Logseq.
Wait, what? Ok, yes… Logseq is very similar to Roam, but it uses locally hosted markdown files (fancy text files) instead, just like Obsidian, so you always own all your data in a simple, future-proof format.
My first 30 minutes with Logseq
Here’s one of the first things I ever wrote in Logseq:
Man, just using [[Logseq]] for 5 mins and I can already feel that there’s a material difference between typing here and in Obsidian. What is this sensation? All I can see in terms of difference is the way that every paragraph (hard enter) is treated like a new bullet, or block as they call it here. And I’m here, typing in the journal page. What’s up with that?
Further down in a sub-bullet to the above note (I decided to delve into this mystery a bit) I wrote:
Realization: I’m literally having a conversation with myself here in a way that I’ve never felt compelled to in Obsidian. It’s an inquiring and inquisitive part of me that is invited to write in these blocks about my stream of consciousness. Very interesting.
For the next 30 minutes, I just sat and wrote to myself about the differences between Obsidian and Logseq, trying to come up with a theory on why I felt so different in Logseq, even though the experiences are very similar on the surface.
This was a high quality activity of inquisition. I’ve never thought and written so thoroughly on a single point of curiosity before.
How did this tool enable this inquiry within me? I’m still investigating.