After on and off using Emacs for more years than I care to admit I think I finally understand it! Having approached Emacs as just another editor it's slowly becoming clear there may be a better approach. Until now my Emacs usage was get vim bindings set up with Evil and attempt to maximize my productivity in Emacs from the point of view of editing.

My level of abstraction was limited to editing and writing. I used Emacs to solve problems at that level, limiting my understanding of Emacs. It was like I was stuck in a local maxima. Instead of understanding Emacs I was attempting to configure it as quickly as possible and think about other problems.

For past couple of weeks I have been attempting to use Emacs in a way that lets me learn about it. I want to maximize the time I spend in Emacs and treat Emacs as the default application when using a computer.

How does one approach Emacs in this way. For me it started with realizing that installing external packages meant I was learning to configure rather than build and understand. Sure they made things easy but took away my opportunity to learn. Often, taking the easy path now is not the best path over a longer period.

I have not totally closed the door to them but I am trying to keep them below five. At this moment the count stands at two with one of them being the Tron theme Yes I am still configuring things but I find myself closer to the core of Emacs and that matters.

I have to admit it helps that Emacs is at version 30 and seems to have reached a point where a lot of features are shipped with it rather than needing external packages.

Emacs lisp is now a given. Gradually building a strong foundation feels like the best way to shape Emacs to fit me.

It's not entirely clear whether I will keep at this or if it is even a good idea. I may be better off building an environment around the shell and small tools like vim/lazygit and so on. But it's fun so over the coming months I am happy to see where it takes me.

Yes I know there are hundreds of YouTube videos and blog posts that tell you to take this approach. I just never did but once you do...