Last April, I had emergency surgery. A ruptured cyst on my right kidney meant internal bleeding and, eventually, the loss of the kidney itself. I spent 3.5 weeks in a hospital bed, barely moving. When I finally left, my body was a whisper of what it had been.
The recovery was slow—measured in five to ten-minute walks and long stretches on the couch. But by June, something inside me was restless. I needed to do something again, even if small.
I returned to my desktop and started what has become known as vibe coding—low-pressure, creative work that didn’t demand much of my healing body. I was lucky to have access to Claude Code with the standard plan, which meant my token limits became unintentional rest breaks. This turned out to be perfect. I’d work intensely until my tokens ran dry, then I’d have to step away. The impatience gnawed at me, but my body needed those forced pauses. It was a rhythm I didn’t know I needed: burst of focus, then recovery. Work, then rest.
During those months, I gravitated toward note-taking. I tried a few applications—Craft was genuinely good—but nothing quite fit the way my mind worked. Then I discovered Obsidian, and something clicked. I dove into YouTube videos about it, particularly those by Nick Milo from Linking Your Thinking. His voice is soothing, his approach thoughtful. Watching him talk about notes felt like stumbling onto something that mattered, though I couldn’t quite explain why.
Discovery and Hesitation
The more I watched, the more curious I became. I kept seeing references to his Linking Your Thinking Workshop—their sixteenth cohort was starting. Part of me wanted to join. Most of me thought it was absurd.
I’m not working anymore. I’m on a disability pension. I don’t answer to anyone’s project management system or corporate knowledge base. Why would I pay nearly my entire monthly pension for a course about making notes? It seemed indulgent, self-important even. So I stepped away from the idea.
But it kept nagging at me. A few weeks later, I did something that surprised myself: I applied for a scholarship from the Linking Your Thinking team. I explained my situation honestly. They said yes.
I still thought I might be wasting money on something I didn’t need. But something deeper was pulling me toward this. I couldn’t ignore it, so I didn’t.
Right before the workshop began, I learned I had a second surgery scheduled. It would be in October, during the three-week course. I worried. Would I be well enough to participate? Was this going to be another false start?
Then the surgery got pushed. It landed at the end of November instead—just as the workshop was finishing. Suddenly, the timing was impossible to ignore.
I went in.
The Workshop
I thought I’d learn a note-taking system. I thought Nick would teach us his ACE framework or sell us on the Ideaverse. Instead, he did something better: he taught us to build our own systems, to think about how we think and make our notes reflect that. The system wasn’t the point. Understanding yourself was.
But the real revelation came from the people.
The Linking Your Thinking community felt like stumbling into somewhere I didn’t know I needed to be. It was warm, welcoming, genuinely diverse. There was an energy—created intentionally by Nick and his team—that was hard to describe. Familial, maybe. Safe. Over three weeks, I spent hours in Obsidian building my own note system, and it felt really good. Not in the way productive work feels good. In the way coming home feels good.
When it ended, I felt the loss sharply.
The community doesn’t disappear after the workshop closes. You stay connected, which matters more than I expected it to.
But I wanted more. So I’ve committed to the full year with their Knowledge Accelerator program. There’s another workshop in February, plus monthly mini-workshops and courses throughout the year. I’m genuinely looking forward to it.
I know I probably won’t recreate that first, bright intensity of discovery and inspiration. That was a specific moment—a person healing, finding community, stumbling onto something that fit exactly when they needed it to. Those things don’t repeat in the same way.
But if I can hold onto even a fraction of what I found there, it will have been worth every penny and every moment of doubt.