Minor Zettelkasten obsession

I keep on reading and thinking about Zettelkasten systems, although my first attempt (which I tried for a considerable amount of time) didn't really work out.

I think the overhead that such a system incurs doesn't pay out. I'm more summarizing, breaking down and mechanically linking things together, but not really thinking it through. After a while I abandoned the system and accepted that I cannot capture everything due to scalability issues.

Maybe I did it wrong, I didn't stand still and think about content, but was more occupied with storing and linking. Still the idea of storing content somehow stuck with me, resulting in reading (and thinking) about it. For some reason, whenever a post appears on Hacker News about Zettelkasten, my attention is drawn to it.

But what is it that draws my attention to this topic? What do I hope to get out of it? To have an external memory of everything I read, right at my fingertips? It's convenient at best, but that can't be it.

This whole exercise is a means to a goal, but the goal is still fuzzy to me.

What I do enjoy is going back to old notes or pictures and get reminded of the 'good old days', whatever it may mean. 10 years ago my life looked completely different, so having some records of today's thoughts could entertain my 10 year older self.

Probably it will take me some time to settle on a goal for doing it. To be continued.