what if i turned the cafe blog into a digital garden

Reasoning

Cost

Mints Cafe Archive is a passion project to the utmost degree, and a big issue with that is actually cost. I won't go into the specifics but given the amount of money I put into maintaining the site without ads or anything else, I'll just let it be known that I'm not exactly making a profit, lol.

Running it free through github as a Digital Garden, or even obsidian publish, would help offset those costs a lot, which would be nice.

Near Zero Audience

No disrespect to my wonderful 17~ subscribers, but it's not like a whole bunch of people are tuning into this blog, at least not as regular subscribers - most find it through Cohost or other external sources. I wouldn't really be losing much if I downloaded the archive and swapped out the URL.

I already write everything in Obsidian

I'm pretty much whole-hog in this system, and because they're just a bunch of markdown files, I don't have to worry about losing my work or progress 5 or 10 years down the line, like with previous blogs.

Non-Performative Blogging

This is the main reason I started thinking about making the move. I don't want to perform anymore. Nor do I just want my website, my only digital footprint, to be narrowed in scope because I feel like it needs to be. I don't want to "compete" with myself or "make content." Writing is stressful. Why am I crafting, editing, and revising with a timestamp? I'm a tiny magazine sending writing off to the printer, and for who? When it comes to blogging, I've moved from casual live-journal entries to writing articles and essays like some sort of fucking chump. This feels counterintuitive to the main selling point of the internet - there's no "final" version of it.

I want what I publish to always be open to revision and expansion. I want to free myself from the pressure of getting things right, create something low friction, maybe give people an insight into my process even. Why don't I just lay my imperfections bare and show y'all that I'm a mediocre human being just trying to understand the world. Hell, I even want to extend beyond just writing, even though right now I don't fully see the point of anything. I want a blog, but I also want a wiki, with ideas, snippets, resources, random thoughts, collections, and thoughts that I find interesting and useful. No more performance blogging - let me create a human endeavor.

Or maybe not.

I'm currently too emotionally volatile to trust whether this is worthwhile at the moment. It feels like it, but I'll probably wait before I make any sort of decision.