[[Notes on My Style]] I have always felt like I don't have much of a "style" as a person, which made me feel pretty bad, not going to lie. This was never true, of course, but I think it took hitting 30 to realize it. It also took reading some of my older writing to get a sense of that too, as well as working in Obsidian for the past two years. As I've grown as a person, I've come to consider style to be a distillation of your consistency, moreso than the things that make you "unique." I feel like that's a lot easier to see in a weathered visual artist's technique than in the sort of creative work I do, which is probably why it's taken so long for me to realize that I've had a style that's existed at the core of my writing since I started blogging when I was 16. I've also thought about how style exists *outside* creative work for me too. You can see above that I wrote out a list of what I consider to be my style after a lot of thinking and perusing my old work, which I'm gonna into detail about now. --- The first thing that stuck out to me was my usage of font, typeface, and color. [Recursive Sans](https://www.recursive.design/) has become my signature font on any device. I just find it pleasant to look at, and I love how it's fun-looking but still readable. I've come to always **bold** the media that I'm talking about, and use *italics* solely for emphasis. And I like to have two separate colors for both types of things. It catches the eye on [my website](https://taniyn.quest), and adds a bit of ~wimsy~ to the whole experience. When it comes to the act of writing itself, I find it impossible without soundscapes, like those of [[MyNoise]]. I usually listen to rain or ocean noises. It never occured to me, but I have done this while writing, pretty much every day, without interruption, for *years*. I also like to streamline everything I do. My [[My Rating System]] serves this purpose in a way. The tech that I use does too, whether it be my moonlander keyboard, my [[Tech Stack - 12012024|tech stack]], or Obsidian itself. My style of thinking tends to revolve around capturing ideas or stray throughts immediately and reviewing them consistently on the weekends. The same applies to interesting things I find - all bookmarks go to Raindrop right away, and articles go to Instapaper. My [[ADHD]] makes it so that I am always trying to keep my brain well-nourished, and part of that means keeping it free of overwhelming thoughts. My style of clothes trends to form over function nowadays. I love streetwear - durable clothes with lots of pockets and cool graphic design on them. That may change in the future - and a note I'd like to make is that I don't think a person's style remains the same forever - but I love graphic-based clothes. I feel like they let me stand out a little bit more, haha. The hardest thing to pin down was my style of writing. I am truly hard on myself when it comes to my writing, and that's where most of the criticism of my lack of style comes from at the beginning of this post. I was sure that I don't have any sort of voice, or consistency, and that I just write however when the mood strikes me. None of that is true, though. My flow has changed (for the better, I think) since I started regularly writing back in the day, but these things have always been true: *Write about what you love*: this is how I started, and it's still the thing I do the most. Writing about the things that make you happy is one of the most therapeutic things in the world for me. Whether it's in my dinky-ass Wordpress blog, or here in this [[Digital Garden]], getting to do that has been a joy. *Write about what you hate*: Perhaps a weird second point, but it's true - articulating the the things that make me *unhappy* is equally important to me. It's not a thing that comes up as often, but that sort of writing pushes me to be consise and persuasive, or at least not sound like an unhinged person. *Write about what you want*: I'm actually writing something about this later that I'll hopefully remember to link back here, but this is probably the most important rule for me. My style has simply been writing as a form of expression. I have never strayed from writing about whatever interests me, whether it be media, organizational skills, technology I like, my own life, and so on. Those are the broad strokes that capture my writing style. But there are also more minute details: *Link everything*: This is a stylistic choice that's come from my past few years in Obsidian, but I love linking pages together, as evidenced by this post! It creates a web of ideas that all connect to one another,and gives me interesting insights on my own interests. I find it very satisfying, especially as this garden grows bigger with each passing year. *Keep it casual*: I've been writing like this since 2010 to be honest. I like to write the same way I'd yap to a friend. I'm not trying to impress anybody, and I don't mean that in a superior-sounding sort of way - I legit just don't have that "essay-writer" dawg in me, LOL. Sometimes I wish I did! Not happening any time soon though, I think. For 2025, this also applies to my notes-based approach for 2025, detailed in [[My Obsidian Workflow|my Obsidian workflow]]. I want to be a bit more loose with what I let people see in my work, because I think it's fun! It also lets me write more freely - I've been on a tear these past two weeks, and besides the new ADHD meds, I truly think a big part of that stems from my ability to just let myself write brief notes that end up forming a larger thought in the future. --- I like my style. This feels good to say after struggling so much with feeling like [[Just a Guy Online]]. I'm happy I took the time to think about what my style truly is. It shows up in more than just my actual writing - it's my process, my visual elements, and even the way I think about stuff. Neat! ## Other Style Notes [[Managing and Growing Ideas]]