My Commonplace Site

A digital home for thoughts, notes, and explorations.

I'm Will—a dad, musician, entrepreneur, and collector of knowledge. For the past 18 years, I've been teaching guitar, and through that work, I've learned that the best way to truly understand something is to teach it. This site is my way of learning in public and sharing what I discover.

What This Is

This is my commonplace book—a digital space where I collect ideas, connect thoughts, and explore topics that fascinate me. Unlike a traditional blog that presents polished final thoughts, this is a garden of evolving notes. Some ideas are seeds just planted, others are growing connections between concepts, and a few might be fully formed perspectives.

You'll find notes on:

  • Music theory and the history of Western music
  • Philosophy and the ideas that shape how we think
  • Technology, productivity systems, and the tools we use
  • Books I'm reading and thinkers I'm learning from
  • Whatever else captures my curiosity

How to Explore

  • Articles — Longer-form explorations and lecture notes
  • Books — Notes on what I'm reading
  • People — Ideas from thinkers I'm studying

The notes are connected through links (like the ones you see above). Click around and follow your curiosity—that's how a digital garden is meant to be explored.

Why I'm Doing This

"As long as men are free to ask what they must—free to say what they think—free to think what they will—freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress."
— J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1945

Knowledge grows when we share it openly. By maintaining this space in public, I'm holding myself accountable to think clearly, question deeply, and connect ideas across disciplines. If something here sparks an idea for you, even better.

File over app. All the content here lives in plain markdown files in Obsidian, synced to GitHub, and published with Next.js. I own my data, and it will outlast any platform.

(For my ClickUp business website, visit The Productive Dad.)