A purpose for Obsidian

I’ve had an off and on relationship with Obsidian for some time now. I want to love the app, but after using it for a period, I always end up frustrated, and I move to something else.

I’ve started to use Obsidian in a way that works for me. More on that in a minute. First some venting.

I don’t know exactly what it is that I don’t like about Obsidian.

I think it’s the way you interact with files. It’s also the ugly search, file presentation, backlinks, and so many other things that irritate me. It all seems to work okay, but not for me. If I were to try to pinpoint a part of Obsidian that I don’t like, it’s the Organization of my content. It all makes sense in theory, but execution is where it gets me.

Obsidian has failed me when I tried to use it as a Notes application. When I attempt to use it as a Capture tool, then make connections between notes, etc. All of that PKM jargon I’ve come to find pretty useless for me.

The other thing that I have a love/hate relationship with is the Plugins. On one hand, Obsidian can be very overwhelming with everything that’s possible. On the other hand, I can make Obsidian work the way I want it to, by enabling or disabling third-party and core plugins.

Now that the venting is out of the way, I’ll talk about how I started to use Obsidian and make it work for me.

What I do love about Obsidian is that it is local-first. My files are simple Markdown text files that live on my computer. I can take them anywhere, and use them with other applications.

I also like the writing experience in Obsidian, mostly. The Live Preview Markdown mode can be weird sometimes, but for simple writing, it’s pretty good.

The other thing I’ve come to quite enjoy is how I can write something and publish to Micro.blog using the Micro Publish plugin. It’s pretty seamless. I can’t wait for image support!

I now open Obsidian to a blank screen, which creates a new note in the Drafts folder. I use CTRL-N to create a new note. Then I write. When it’s ready, I publish. Then I drag that file to a folder named Posts, where I store my published content. I also have a Pages folder where I can keep Pages on my blog updated.

If I need to find an existing note that I need to update, I use the built-in Quick Switcher (CTRL-O).

That’s mostly it. I’m using Obsidian solely as a writing tool. And I find I’m truly enjoying it now.

I have a few plugins that help me accomplish this: - Micro Publish : Post to Micro.blog. - Focus Mode: To toggle into focus mode where I only see the note itself - Language Tools: Built in Grammar checking. - Border theme: My favorite theme at the moment. - Style Settings: For tweaking the Border theme to my liking.

Here is a screenshot of what Obsidian looks like when not in Focus Mode.

And here with Focus Mode enabled.

I’m sure I’ll keep tweaking things now and then. That’s how I work. But overall, I’m loving the simplicity of this setup.