In attempting to move to a new note-taking system, I inadvertently deleted all of my old notes from Obsidian. Several thousand notes, dating back to 2014, and maybe beyond, gone in an instant. For whatever reason, iCloud backups failed to get them back, nor did anything else that I use for backup. I think it was simply a mistake on my part—moving and deleting things before I understood how things worked.

After the initial shock of losing the notes wore off, and I checked as many places as I thought they could be hiding, I came to terms with the loss. In some ways, I’m glad they are gone. I had notes dating back to 2014 in there, rarely looked at, languishing in the digital ether. The only reason I know they are that old is because I would see them each time I migrated to a new note system. I was clinging to a few thousand notes that I rarely looked at, thinking that one day they would be useful. Now, I’ll find out if any of them really were worth keeping at all.

Sohnke Ahrens writes about fleeting notes and permanent notes in How to Take Smart Notes, and I suspect most of the notes I expected to be permanent were nothing more than fleeting.

That’s okay.

I shall take this opportunity to have a grand restart.

I think my time with Obsidian is done. It was wonderfully fiddly, but ultimately, more tool, and less, tool than I needed. It is time I go back to a trusted, simple system of Markdown files and fast software.

A fond goodbye to my notes of the past. I hope you will not be missed.