[Go Make Things] The joy of digital gardening

By rahmat hidayat

Monday, March 10, 2025

​ A few weeks back, I mentioned that I wanted to shift my approach to creating things for the web to more of a digital garden approach. I made the leap two-ish weeks ago, and it's been an utter delight. The web is actually fun again! And as a result, I'm writing, making, and sharing more than ever. Today, I wanted to share what I've been up to and what's new. Let's dig in! What I've done… A bit part of the process for me was consolidating all of my various web things under the Go Make Things umbrella… All of my ADHD articles got moved over here. All of my various domains got moved to subdomains of GoMakeThings.com (like https://reef.gomakethings.com). I added a /now page to this site where I periodically share life stuff. I added a Notes section to this site for evergreen notes I want to share publicly. I added a few little bits of whimsy to the site for folks who poke around and explore. I added a ton of content to my Members Garden, and made some big improvements. I also merged my Web Dev and ADHD Discord communities together, and it's wild how much mixing two semi-overlapping groups of people together has spurred a ton of great new conversation and connections! New content Over in the Members Garden, I've added a lot of new stuff, including… Resources on content creation. All of my ADHD courses, including Getting Shit Done, my Obsidian Boilerplate, and my ADHD handbook. I did a big update on my Career Guide. I added resources on playing TTRPGs (including stuff for people who want to get into stuff like D&D but have never played before). I added my complete guide to planning your first Disney World trip. I added guides on CSS Grid, Flexbox, my approach to CSS architecture, and more. You can find this stuff on my site, too, if you search for it. But the Members Garden provides a really nice user experience for as little as $3/month, and gets you access to my private Discord community. Intercropping One of the main concepts Maggie Appleton talks about in her detailed guide on digital gardening is intercropping: mixing unrelated pieces of content together. This is, in my opinion, a big part of what's made this so much fun for me again. Having to write about "just JavaScript" every day started to feel more like a trap than a focus after a while. This experiment gave me permission to expand a bit. You may have noticed some recent articles on music and politics and ADHD and RVing. I've been really cool to chat with folks I know through tech about things that aren't tech-related at all. I feel like I'm connecting with people on a deeper, more meaningful level. I also added a lot of non-tech content to my Members Garden, because it's also useful for me to have quick-and-easy reference to a lot of that stuff. Drifting A few weeks ago, I wrote about feeling rudderless in the industry right now. And, to be honest, I still do. But digital gardening has brought back some joy the web more broadly for me. I'm drifting, but I'm enjoying the journey and the freedom of just going where the winds take me. I encourage you to try it for yourself. Carve out your own weird little corner of the web. Like this? A Go Make Things membership is the best way to support my work and help me create more free content. Cheers, Chris ​ Want to share this with others or read it later? View it in a browser.​ ​

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