My blogging workflow - alpha test edition lilithesque Sat, 22 Aug 2026 - 11:06 by lilithesque, Mon August 24, 2026 As my thankfully appreciative spouse will tell you, I love a process. It calms my brain, plus it's a vital reference for those days when Brain Fog strikes. So for week two of Blaugust[1] it's a no-brainer that I'd take up the prompt to explain my current - though very nascent - blogging workflow. Our dramatis personae Hardware Phoenix: a 10+ year old resurrected ex-work Dell XPS-13 laptop Ariel: a much younger Fairphone 6 Pilot: a much older long-suffering gaming PC Calliope: Ariel's pretty elder sister, a 2-year-old iPad The Planner: an oracle (otherwise known as a SoTypicalMe spiral-bound planner) The Invisible Planet: our home locale, a shared hosting server housing website and email Software Obsidian: an open source 'second brain' application Vivaldi: an open source web browser and email client Drupal Core: an open source web development platform/framework ShareX: an open source screen capture tool for PC Procreate: a paid but industry standard digital art app for iOS Affinity Designer 2: a paid Photoshop/Illustrator alternative for PC and iOS, not open source but now free via Canva account Setting the scene Write write write, day and night I do all my actual writing in Obsidian. I'm new to using it, but it fulfils everything I need from an app that's notebook, to do manager, virtual filing cabinet, and word processor all rolled into one. I'm working on moving all my to-do lists, processes and random notes over so that everything's in one place: I've learned that the less places I have for writing something down, the more likely I am to actually keep track of it and (eventually) get it done. For ease, I pay for Obsidian's official sync offering. There are ways to self-host, but it's an inexpensive way to support them, and it takes all the management of syncing off my plate - especially right now when I'm busy doing development on the site itself and trying to actually write some posts. My Vivaldi tabs - where I do all my research and link-finding - and my Obsidian vault[2] are synced between my laptop and phone, so I can pick up where I'm at really from anywhere. That's absolutely key for me because even when I'm medicated, my ADHD will constantly fire off ideas about a project if I'm in the midst of it... but that lesser-known ADHD trait known as Fucking Awful Working Memory means if I don't record it immediately it's usually gone by the time I reach paper to write it down. When writing I often think in sentences complete with punctuation and I can get quite fixated on getting it down exactly right, so being able to do that[3] takes a lot of the stress out of operating this brain. During the day I usually sit at my laptop at my worktable and focus - that's when I get the bulk of writing or development done. But I can - and do - also whip my phone out while I'm queuing for groceries, or watching a movie, and note down whatever just popped into my head or make a quick just-remembered edit to a finished draft. Having the ability to not just write down 'edit this later' but actually do the work from anywhere also helps manage those low-spoons[4] days. But it's not all words I've also synced my browser tabs and Obsidian vault to my gaming PC and iPad, but not for writing. Obsidian can store and organise almost any kind of files, so as I start adding images to my content - whether those are public domain, screenshots, or my own work - I can drop them directly in place in my draft and have everything ready in one place to be edited and posted. I take screenshots with ShareX, which actually has some pretty great editing power of its own: I can crop or mark up instantly, then just copy-paste straight into Obsidian. (Caveat: the recent update to the ShareX editor was truly vile to behold, but thankfully the legacy editor option reappeared shortly after and I really recommend sticking with that.) I usually prefer to have as few apps as possible to do a job, but for graphic work beyond ShareX I tend to split my time between Affinity and Procreate. While Affinity on the iPad is excellent, and it has modes for both vector and pixel work, I find Procreate a little easier to get on with for drawing and has a wider community of creatives sharing cool ideas to learn from. Affinity, on the other hand, is absolutely an equal to Photoshop and Illustrator. It's the tool I go to for all the typical quick or technical tasks to prep images for a post: getting downloaded images into the right file format any extra marking up or editing screenshots cropping and resizing vector drawing and editing I talked at length about the setup of Drupal in my last post, so I won't go over it again here. Obsidian's markdown-based setup works pretty with CKEditor - the full HTML editor in the default install of Drupal - with not much extra work needed, but I'm also looking at plugins on both sides to really streamline future post formatting. And with all that set up, we're ready for our tale to begin. The Process Get your words out Every post begins with an idea. Sometimes it's from a fest like Blaugust, sometimes it reflects real life - 'ooh, how I made this site would make a cool post' - and sometimes it's just a random spark of madness at 3am. Whatever it might be, I make a new Obsidian note with enough detail in the title to remind me later, which results in such gems as: Fourteen books I love that tell you about me[5] Blaugust 2026 wrap-up On task tracking and short term memory The life-changing magic of a Dymo machine What's in a name Palia ranching feedback My therapist things I should be an AuDHD consultant and she's not wrong, so here's a blog I put any initial thoughts down in the Obsidian note. That can be anything from nothing at all, to an entire paragraph - or more - exactly as I want it to be. My brain is fickle and interesting like that. At this point, the note lives in the Ideas folder. I plan my content in Obsidian, too. When it's that idea's turn, it'll get to emerge from that Ideas folder and - after a probably brief stop in the Planned In folder, denoting it as something that's, well, planned into my content schedule - it settles into the In Draft folder. This gives me a focused set of notes to work on when I sit down to write. I also prepend the note name with the date I'm hoping to post it (or at least the start date of that week) which keeps the files in a priority order. I add a link to those planned-in or in-draft notes from my Content Plan note, where I keep track of where I'm at in this process for the next month or so's content: that gives me an easy way to navigate between just the stuff I'm actively working on. Then I write the full draft in Obsidian over the course of time. How long it takes is still a piece of undefined string since we're not even a month old here - we'll find that out as the blog grows up. Sometimes I get that beautiful publish-ready paragraph to start and the article just flows. If not, I start off with a bulleted list in the rough order of what I want to cover, and slowly expand that out. I have an editing toolbar plugin installed to make formatting easier, but markdown and HTML are also coming back to me at a rate of knots. I also do my general editing as I go. It slows the writing process somewhat, but it's just how I've always written and it works for me. I at least skim-re-read what I've got so far most times I go to work on something: it refreshes me into the right brain place, and it means everything gets a few editing passes even just to catch errant punctuation. In terms of deciding what goes in, I tend to write more to begin with and then kill some darlings later on to tighten things up and shorten the piece if needed. You'll probably notice this is something I need to work on! Once I finish a draft, ideally I let it sit for at least a day. Then I re-read and kill some of those darlings... or at least, slice them out and drop them into my Garbage File[6] if I think they're something I might use later. Then we're ready to go to Drupal! Interlude: (not so) optional extras A well structured post might need: section headers (and maybe a table of contents) images in-text links footnotes I either add these all in as I'm writing, or make an inline note where I need to add an image or link later. I make sure to highlight these so that I don't miss them before posting! If the post is long or structured enough to need a table of contents, I have an Obsidian plugin for that too. It auto-generates a ToC based on the header structure of the note, which makes it much simpler and less likely I'll miss something. Obsidian handles images pasted into a note pretty nicely, and saves them automatically into my Assets/Article Media folder. Since the look of the final post will be slightly different once it's in Drupal, though, I don't worry much about resizing or captioning at this point (unless a witty caption makes itself known) - I just paste the image in where it makes sense in the flow, and sort that detail later. The one thing I do do[7] once I'm sure I'm using an image is to rename it to something descriptive. I also prepend it with the same date as the article I'm writing: this keeps all the images for one article together in the folder, which is helpful when I get to the next step. Drupal Once I've got the whole article drafted and edited, got all my images and links added, it's time to move over here and get things ready to post. The first thing I have to do is get any images uploaded to my Media Library. Doing this before I start the article itself means I can keep the Library neatly organised and don't get halfway through creating the post before I realise I don't have images ready. Drupal works by having 'content types' which are basically templates for different pages you might want on a site - a blog article, a blogroll, a static page, for example. With my images ready, I create a new page of content type Article (I like to keep things simple) and up pops an edit page that will be fairly familiar to anyone who's ever blogged since at least the dawn of LJ. Because Drupal is so customisable, the Create Article page has precisely the fields I want and really nothing else. Because of the Workflow module, a new article automagically has the publication status of 'Draft' so I don't have to worry that I'll accidentally push an unfinished post to my front page or RSS feed. I only change that when I'm sure I'm ready to, in a few steps' time. Some fields such as comment settings are standard and don't need changing most of the time, but are there in case I want to, for example, turn comments off on a specific post. A few other fields like meta tags and authoring info are even already filled in (or will be as soon as I hit save), because I'm able to use tokens to tell Drupal what goes there, and save myself time and spoons remembering to do it manually each time. This is a huge deal for me: every part of the process (of all my processes) needs to be efficient not just because it makes my brain happy (though it does, oh it does) but to free up as many spoons as I can for the rest of life. I paste in the title; type in the URL alias for the finished post; select myself from the dropdown as author; and manually type in any tags I think the article should have. Tags autocomplete from the existing list but right now I'm also usually adding at least one or two new ones. This is usually when I also think up the summary (the text that appears in preview links), whether that's going to just be the start of the article or I'll write something specific. Featured image is a required field as this gets served up on my front page and accompanies the summary text in any preview links. I want to make these pretty in the longer run, but for now in the spirit of Just Doing It Imperfectly, if I don't have an image I've already added to the article that will serve, I'll do an open source/public image search to find something appropriate. I started to list my sources here and then decided that's probably a post all of its own[8]; but I will leave creativecommons.org as a teaser for just what a wealth of legally usable media is out there if you go find it! The beauty and benefit of using Obsidian shows up next. I just copy the whole article I've got written, and... paste it into the body field. Yep, that's it. Then I hit save and see what we've got! Currently there are a few things I have to clean up manually - footnote links are wonky going from markdown to HTML, and my headers like to be unfriendly and far too spaced out - but for the most part, that really is all there is to it. I usually spend a couple of hours or so going back and forth making little tweaks in the source until I'm happy it looks how I want it. This is the part that really needs tightening up next! Once it looks how you, dear reader, will finally see it, that's when I actually do my final line edit. Sometimes you just can't see that something isn't right until it's in place, you know? So I read the whole thing as you'll read it. Then I make any last trims or edits - more for the Garbage File! Now I'm hopefully happy with the final thing, I can choose to schedule it for automated posting at a specific date and time. This is important for that spoon conservation, since I can write in advance when I have them and still post on a regular schedule. Or, like right now when I'm 'behind' on my ideal schedule, it's time to just hit post! In my case, that actually means change the status to 'Published'. Via the power of nerdy magic, this automatically: Makes the post visible on the site; Shows the post on my front page; Shows the post in my sidebar of 5 most recent; Adds the post to my RSS feed next time it refreshes. With the post up, I go back to Obsidian and change the link in my Content Plan to point to here. Then I can delete the finished draft note to keep things tidy... and get to work on the next one! Coda: the invisible process of being Isn't it a lovely process? It has numbered steps and everything makes logical sense... Life isn't really like that, though. Oh, this is my current workflow, and it's working really well for something that's very much in alpha testing. But a logical list can't capture the other steps - the illogical ones that inevitably happen when operating a slightly broken brain, or just trying to blog while actually having life go on around me. Insert any or all of these in at any point in the process you fancy and you'd be right: One of my three different hyperfocus-breaking reminders goes off: BreakTimer pops up and takes over my screen because I've snoozed it five times already to make me take a screen break; SuperMoo moos at me from my phone to tell me to get up and mooooooove; Alarm Clock Beyond goes off for the second or third time to tell me I really have to take a lunch break, no really, I have to eat. I realise it's 3pm and I'm jittery from lack of fuel, and lose the next hour to recovering from how horrible that feels. I have an anxiety attack: maybe because something's gone wrong or isn't flowing, or maybe just because it's Thursday. I take a beta blocker and do some breathing exercise. I get up and take a short stim break. I might be lucky and/or self-aware enough to have caught it in time and carry on... or I'm not, and I have to put things down, then take a break to go regulate myself with a weighted blanket, a fan, a comfort plushie, an eye mask to block out the world, or all of the above. I wake up with barely enough spoons to make it through the basic day, for any of a dozen reasons or sometimes an exciting new one. My careful planning of the week goes out the window and instead of writing all morning or fixing up the next fun thing on here, I sleep. And sleep. And try not to feel the crushing guilt of Not Being Enough. I look at the finished draft, moments from publishing, and have a crisis of it's too wordy and it's not good enough; of you're not finished, you need to edit again and you'll put people off reading at all if you post this. I get distracted by That One Task that I just keep seeing in the corner of my eye, even though it's not in my planner for the week and it's not that important, and I've really got to finish this draft, but ADHD brain says let's doooo iiiiiit... and two hours later the bathroom shelves are finally reorganised but I'm still a week 'late' on this post... It's not all doom and gloom, though - or at all! There's a million ways to manage these sneaky steps, the first of which is just to acknowledge they're there. Sure, I can plan my life as if these aren't daily occurrences. All that gets me is a cocktail of frustration and disappointment and self-recrimination[9] at the end of the week, when I've not achieved what I set out for because I wasn't honest about my limitations. Instead, I'm learning to be flexible and compassionate with myself. I take those breaks, even if it takes a while to snap out of the hyperfocus. I listen to my brain when it says we can do it all - and then I plan half of that. I keep to weekly planning, in my paper Planner because it's a constant visible reminder, and when the day or week is full that's it - I remind myself I can't fit more tick boxes in because I can't fit more in. I let myself be 'late' posting something, and still post it. I pre-write as much as I can, to get ahead of those low-spoons days or sudden anxiety hijackers. (I'm working hardest on this right now, in fact.) I accept that no matter what my brain says, it doesn't have to be perfect. That every post is practice for the one after, for whatever comes next; and yet it has value of its own, wordy and imperfect as it might be. These are the messy and sometimes unpleasant parts of the workflow, but without them it wouldn't be true - and that truth is important to me. I want to give voice to that side of the process. Managing these steps is as much of a challenge as everything else - but it's just as possible and just as rewarding, too. Albeit rather late, but that's the story of my life.↩︎ It's called the Obsidian Sanctum, of course. Yes, I was a WoW player for 15 years, why do you ask?↩︎ I literally wrote this down on my phone having jumped out of the shower so I didn't forget. Very meta, I know.↩︎ I think this is the first of what will be constant references to Spoon Theory - one of the most standard measures of fluctuating daily capability for disabled people. Here's a primer for those who don't know it.↩︎ Coming soon to a blog near here!↩︎ Hack the planet!↩︎ Tee hee.↩︎ Like I said, it's a thing I'm working on!↩︎ If this were a cocktail, it would taste slightly worse than earwax.↩︎ Featured image credit: "Bright markers highlight a creative brainstorming mind map on a notebook page" by 🦋 thepaintedsquare is licensed under Pexels Free License. Tags the making of blaugust 2026 blaugust mental health development deep dive long-ass post obsidian workflows open source drupal