Embracing My Collector Within Inspired a Return to Obsidian

In terms of my note-taking, it’s been a tumultuous couple of months. I wrote about how I was unhappy with Obsidian and that I was ‘officially’ switching to Capacities. Well now I’m here to say — I’m switching back. I never really went away from Obsidian, I just avoided it.

I left it in a state of limbo; out of sight, out of mind.

Except that it very much wasn’t.

And it’s because of my love of collecting postage stamps that I am inspired to return.

You see, my experience with Obsidian, as a ‘tinkerer’s paradise’, is a bit like my evolving experiences with the humble postage stamp.

The good old days

In the latter half of the last century, almost every kid collected stamps. It was the thing to do before TV and computers took it all away.

As a quiet kid in the 90s I used to spend hours sifting through stamps looking for the ones I was missing. In the process I would learn about the history of different countries, whilst experiencing the full pleasure of sorting and resorting them all in to piles according to what I was working on at the time. In later years I would search eBay for good deals and scrounge car boots for forgotten albums. I loved the whole process.

The excitement of finding the odd rare specimen was worth every hour I poured into it.

Now this hobby has all but disappeared off the radar for most people. Just a small, but very divided, community remains. Not divided in a bad way, just in an odd way. It’s a combination of old, retired men with traditionalist approaches and young women inspired by graphic design, letter-writing and Instagram feeds.

Yet in other words, we could see it as undergoing an evolution. And when things diverge in this way, is when things get interesting and opportunities arise.

Then things changed

Over the years, I evolved too, and moved away from those traditionalist approaches. I collaged envelopes to match the design of a stamp. I created rainbow stamp-themed album pages. I shared my collection online and I found there were other young people who appreciated stamps like I did. In conjunction with stamps, I collected a ridiculous amount of paper and craft materials to bring together two loves; collecting stamps and crafts.

In essence, this was ‘linking your thinking’ in it element. My niche was made.

Fast forward to the late 2010s and on the back of this, I became a postage stamp dealer. I was one of a few dealers for this new age of postage stamp collectors and admirers.

If I didn’t get PhD funding in 2020, I was quitting my job to be a full time dealer. For real.

But the opposite was also to be true; when I finally got PhD funding, I stopped trading. It was one or the other. A big part of me was sad, but I was set on a new voyage, so I packed my bags and closed the door, literally.

As you can imagine, the rather abrupt end to my wheeler dealer days has left an awful lot of albums, unsorted stamps and philatelic paraphernalia in various cupboards and rooms in my house, in addition to the mountains of envelopes and craft materials.

It’s organised enough so that I know roughly where to find things, but disorganised and copious enough that the thought of even opening a box or going into certain rooms fills me with dread.

I left it in a state of limbo; out of sight, out of mind.

Except that it isn’t.

Like my experience with Obsidian, something uneasy sat inside of me until I realised what had happened…

The tool does matter, the process matters more, but your fundamental internal desires and needs, matter the most.

Discover those roots of your being, and its plain sailing as to your choices in apps, systems and processes. I would be lying if I said that was easy to discover though.

I’d evolved, but left something behind in the process

Now part of the problem, was that when I started dealing, I stopped collecting. I started collecting for other people, not for me. I spent hours sorting into what other people would like or buy. I learnt what I needed to know for sharing with other people, not learning what I wanted to know, just because it was interesting to me.

Now to caveat this, making money from something we enjoy doing is amazing, but it can come at a cost. And that cost is losing what makes it enjoyable in the first place.

It dawned on me I was undergoing the same process with Obsidian that I had with my postage stamp collecting. As I focused on writing and output — express, share or whatever you want to call it — for you the reader, or my PhD, I had lost my love for the process by which it had all originated in the first place.

I thought the answer was to be found in something more basic and structured, something fundamentally ‘more productive’. But I was wrong. I had lost the true meaning behind what I actually enjoyed.

I had forgotten how tinkering and making mistakes and sorting and just simply playing were the bits I enjoyed. It brought me great pleasure to organise my stamp collection and then re-organise and try something new all with no real purpose in mind, other than creating a collection of postage stamps I was proud of.

I thought the endless tinkering and re-organising I did in Obsidian was a waste of time. And ultimately it is to many people and I believed that therefore it was for me too. But I realised it’s what I enjoy doing. It’s what I’ve always enjoyed doing; collecting, organising and tinkering.

If I’m going to come up with my own spin on the ‘note-taking’ methodology, I think I’m going to call it the ‘COT’ method on the basis of this. Tinkering can just be what it means to you to take notes.

Don’t forget the value of unadulterated tinker time

As a PhD parent my personal time is limited, my ‘tinker time’ even more. I made the mistake of replacing tinker time with ‘must be productive and get stuff done time’.

But the other day, I took a deep breath, and delved into those postage stamp and craft-laden cupboards. I spent a good three hours, cutting up bits of paper, arranging them on a page and I created a comic-inspired collage. Just for me.

It was pure delight, even if I did have a child ask every 5 minutes; “was I finished yet?”.

I realised inside those cupboards and boxes of Obsidian is a world of enjoyment and fun and learning and sorting and endless hours of rearranging for my pleasure alone. It doesn’t only exist to ‘make me productive’ and ‘build connections’ but for the pure pleasure of collecting notes, ideas, snippets and things that fascinate me enough to add to ‘my collection’.

It doesn’t belong to my PhD, it doesn’t belong to you, it is just for me.

Evolution may seem new, but it’s the same process happening time and time again

As I move through my PhD, I find out that academia and note-taking are also undergoing a similar evolution to postage stamp collecting. We’ve shifted from old men scribbling on index cards in ivory towers, to the modern note ‘maker’ with beautifully aesthetic, but highly complex digital databases available anywhere, anytime, often to anyone.

I may have needed to close the door on postage stamp dealing and collecting for now, but I realised I still hold all of its attributes in my heart.

I am a collector, I am an organiser, I am a tinkerer, and just occasionally when things come together in a way that I think others might like, I’m a creator.

And that’s OK.

Because for me, the joy is in evolving and exploring my collecting process.

If you have enjoyed reading this and want to collect more insights into the knowledge management process and STEAM research, I have a newsletter called Brain STREAM you might like to read and subscribe to: