On Blogging and Pamphlets

Blogging is an interesting field (is it a genre, medium, or style??). I am glad it is being researched and it should be taken seriously. In recent weeks I have noticed that my own writing on this blog has become lists and links. I send out signs of what I like and what I think will be of interest to those with whom I like to identify. I have been doing this because I want to attract readers but at the same time I am very busy with research and writing, teaching and what we used to call when I was a nurse (my previous life), the Activities of Daily Living. Today at lunch, which was also a pause in hectic day of packing and moving my office (during a snow storm as well), we discussed blogging. It was not a deep philosophical discussion and we did not attempt to answer any of the big questions, but we did discuss content and method. How one publishes a blog and why. I found this interesting and I thought about it afterwards; my writing on this blog is an activity I perform as part of the mutliple activities I do each day; reading, writing, speaking, teaching, meetings, family, shopping, my life in online 3D worlds and so on. This blog is almost 5 years old and has become a record of my development (or lack thereof) as a PhD researcher. I really enjoy keeping a blog, but I realised today that I have become a reactive rather than an active blogger.
I watch other blog's content (The RSS feed is my guide), I collect links to place on my blog (basically what del.isio.us is for but with a social narrative attached on the blog that you don't find with del.icio.us), I do not really follow up posts or follow topics beyond the generic classifications of the tags. If I was an Elizabethan pamphleteer I would be the guy sitting at the back of St Paul's yard watching what was selling on other peoples stalls and then printing some of them. The following the herd is exactly what pamphleting is/was against and why it is/was so interesting. I have decidied to take a more pamphalet apporach to this blog, I will continue with the Friday Downstreams but will try to write more stuff of substance and see where it takes me.

Pamphlet: Non-periodic printed publication of at least 5 but not more than 48 pages exclusive of the cover pages, published in the country and made available to the public. UNESCO