I think this is where I went wrong initially.

I've been curious about starting a Zettelkasten for quite a while now, coming from the idea of a Commonplace book. The Commonplace book idea was a great one - in that it allowed me to keep quotes and references to things top of mind so that I could use them in my writing. BUT it didn't really allow for easier synthesis of the material or connecting to other things I'd read.

So I was used to using tagging as a general category type thing - 'writing' or even 'pretty words' (when I loved the prose in a given quote). But the thought was never about how I'd need to use the quote or idea later - it was instead a way to categorize it, which becomes a hierarchical way of controlling, taming the information.

Thinking of tagging this way, where it invites further conversation and helps me refine my own understanding of a given source, makes a lot of sense to me.