I was on vacation last week on a cruise where I was disconnected for the most part. Intentionally, I had limited connectivity.
Vacations are supposed to relax you.
Almost daily, you see posts about recharged people back from vacation, ready to tackle life. I didn’t feel recharged. We were always on the go with our schedules packed with activities. Even our meal reservations were on schedule. My brain came back mush. Parents of little kids may relate to this: vacation for parents is parenting in a place other than home.
While we kept our children busy and entertained, I stayed away from LinkedIn, AI News, and really news in general. The feeling of FOMO and self-comparison of progress faded briefly.
I came to a realization: exactly a year ago, I had downloaded the Obsidian app in the hopes of jotting down my thoughts while on vacation, and had given it up almost immediately. My vault had incomplete one-line thoughts that were unorganized. I am not sure whether it was an app on my phone or what, but it felt like a steeper learning curve at the time, and I wasn’t able to keep up with it.
I didn’t pick Obsidian back up until January of this year when I integrated it with Claude Code, and it became my second brain. In retrospect, a note app on my phone wasn’t worth the payoff I wanted. I needed something to think in and have versatile use. What I didn’t know was that I needed to pair it with an LLM for reading and writing.
I gave up too early, but my stack was incomplete until I started working with Claude Code and Codex. Now I can’t go a day without using it, as it became my default for writing and research.
And last week while on vacation, I opened it several times to write my thoughts and reflections, and it didn’t feel forced at all.
I am on the sixth load of post vacation laundry, and tired. Still no time to scroll the Linkedin and News feed. I am just happy to be home.
Which app did you give a try and give up on, and then got to love it on the second try?