Internet gardening

Personal websites are an opportunity to be uniquely you online. Your website can be designed in the way that you want. You can express and connect ideas in a way that is personally meaningful. You can create original content and reply to writing or art that you found thought-provoking. You can make: art, essays, blog posts, reflections, interactive experiences. All on the web.

A few months ago, someone referred to be as an “internet gardener.” This title has stuck in my head ever since. I often note that I love tinkering with my website. Whereas some people garden plants, I garden the web. I write the thoughts on my mind. Sometimes, these are technical. Other times, whimsical. Other times, emotional; the result of months of contemplation and years of processing. I experiment with new ideas (plants); when I am out of ideas, I try a new plant.

I come back to the old plants every so often – the moments of joy, the technical essays, the one blog post that is relevant to a discussion I am having – and think back to the memories I had of planting them. I garden.

I sometimes like to use the term “weave the web” to describe people who publish on their personal website. While web-themed, “weave the web” speaks only to one aspect of the web: its interconnectivity. Internet gardening evokes thoughts of the other side of the web: where you are on your own land, cultivating the thoughts on your mind. Letting ideas grow.

For some, this means a digital garden, where notes turn into blog posts; for others, this means essays; for others, series of posts. Drawing, words, HTML, anime characters, websites that document one interest.

If you use the web to explore new ideas, and document them on the web, you are an internet gardener. The small things you make on the web – that one blog post about the one idea on your mind you’re not sure anyone will care about – may be the things that change someone’s perspectives on a topic; that may help someone grow and garden themselves. What seeds will you plant today?