His name is Jack Baty. He’s tried just about every well-known blogging program, from WordPress, Ghost, hugo, 11ty, Blot to Write.as and more. What he says he appreciates about WordPress is that it works “out of the box”: his default way of writing a blog is to click the Create Post button, type something in, and then click the Publish button. This way he doesn’t have to worry about running scripts and dependencies. It’s not as cool as clicking, typing, and clicking for dummies, but it’s good for posting.
However, when trying Hugo, he said that he should have something cooler, that he should have to deal with more than just some HTML.
Unsurprisingly, he soon felt very uncomfortable with the WordPress editor again. After trying many editor programs, he felt he should use Static Site Generators.
He struggled with Hugo for a while. Now he left WordPress again, and went into the arms of static blogging to struggle with 11ty again. He gets tired of static blogs one minute and misses them the next; the same is true for WordPress.
He registered many domain names related to “baty” and tried to use different domain names for different blogs to record different types of content, notes, thoughts, long articles, pictures, etc. He uses rl.baty.net to write his Wiki notes, which is built by TiddlyWiki note-taking software. He uses rl.baty.net for his Wiki notes, which is built with TiddlyWiki note-taking software. He plans to use baty.blog for his blog, and then says he’s not sure if he’ll change it to blog.baty.net. He uses baty.net for more formal and longer posts.
In an post on Write.as he talks about his intention to merge domains. He says, “I’ve been feeling a need to simplify things and I’ve decided that one of those things is domain names. My days of hoarding domain names, just because, are drawing to a close. I don’t want the hassle of managing zones and I don’t need the fees.”
He says he has a dream of One True Blog, which is probably why he’s caught up in such an endless torturous process: wanting to have the one and only place to write on the web that fulfills all the important needs.
He tried using different editors for different types of blogs. From Emacs, Typora, Curio, Quine to Ulysses and more.
He’s also tried blogging with a headless CMS, like Kirby.
In the course of tossing around blogging options, he voices somewhat desperate sentiments. For example, he lamented, “I just want to post stuff”, “How should I do that? Ghost? WordPress? Write.as? Medium?”Also, he feels like he’s “lost interest in everything” and “the only reason I still blogging every day is because I don’t have anything better to do. I keep changing blogging platforms , but it’s just a pastime with no real goal.”
While noticing that he kept changing blogging platforms, I also noticed that he was constantly changing note-taking software. He tried almost all the well-known note-taking software such as Evernote, Roam Research, TiddlyWiki, Tinderbox, Crafts, Obsidian, Tana, and others. At first he was a Roam believer, then thought TiddlyWiki was more interesting than Roam, and then wonder, what could be done with Crafts? He reflected, Do backlinks really work?
In the course of tossing around note-taking software, he also emits somewhat despairing sentiments. For example, he says, “My new note-taking system: Don’t take notes,” and he “feels like the entire world (or at least my corner of) is consumed by the ‘how’ of note-taking. Tools, workflows, processes, backlinks, and on and on. Obsidian? Roam? Paper? I read it all. It’s fun and interesting and there’s no end of things to distract myself with. A distraction is all it is.” Then again, after trying Tana, he decided that personal knowledge management had exhausted him and he was going to go back to paper in its most traditional form, the plain text editor.
That’s it for this guy’s story. By the way, I forgot to mention the fact that Baty has been unemployed for many years, and he has written “Hire me” in an obvious position on several websites.
I’m not introducing him to ridicule him, although he realizes he might be ridiculed. I can’t remember exactly when I discovered Baty, but I was struck by his honesty of record.
I saw myself in him. Some time ago, when I was struggling to break away from the usual electronic games and realized that my blog had been inactive for months, I couldn’t help but feel that I had just switched from one kind of electronic game to another.
Perhaps Baty is a mirror of everyone who is addicted to a new type of electronic game. The difference is that he has faithfully documented his record of tossing and turning, whereas many of us have either hidden the whole thing or left only a few words behind.
Here are a few facts I got from Baty’s story, my own experiences and observations:
people who toss around new types of note-taking software have a good chance of also tossing around blogging programs;
people who are addicted to various efficiency tools are often losers who have little success in their industry or field;
people who are obsessed with new note-taking software or blogging programs spend more time playing ordinary electronic games and less time obsessing about the former, and vice versa;1
new note-taking software and blogging programs are, in essence, new electronic games.
most busy and fulfilled people are unaware of new types of note-taking software or do not have a blog.
Of course, I don’t present these facts as some kind of criticism (despite the Chinese old saying that “Excessive attention to plaything saps your will”). Most people, if they don’t play this game, they play that game. It’s just a bit of a paradox that the new electronic games are inherently associated with so-called efficiency, creativity, and productivity, when in fact they’re just games.