I just can't get into Obsidian

I tried, Obsidian, I really did. But I just can’t get into you.

For the month of July, I was determined to try again. I went all-in with Obsidian for daily notes, project notes, tasks, journaling, all of it. After two days I knew that it wasn’t going to work for journaling or tasks. Then after a couple more days I knew it wouldn’t work for project notes. I was left with my “pkm” notes and daily notes.

Obsidian for PKM or a Zettelkasten might make sense¹. It’s got all the linking, the graph, and the tooling for it.

But it’s still Obsidian, and I just don’t like it. I don’t like how it looks (I’ve tried like 30 themes). I don’t like the way I get sucked into using plugins for everything, whether I need them or not. Most of all, I don’t like how Obsidian feels. The word that comes to mind is “Janky”. It’s much better than it used to be, but it’s still off somehow. I’m not blaming Electron, but that’s probably part of it.

Plus, this bugs me more than it should every time I see it:

If I’m going to depend on a tool and live in it, it’s gotta feel right. It needs to resonate. Obsidian doesn’t.

I’ll revisit again in a year or so, but for now, I’m back in Emacs.