BECAUSE I BLOG, I unconsiously look along skirting boards, railings and windowsills for power. And when I discover them next to my seat (like in the Amtrak ride at left), I'm very happy, because I'm a hobbyist blogger. I use blogging most as a patchwork note to self. Blogging lets me claim a title of "diarist" with all the honour I felt as a "scribe" in Cub Scout Den Six more than 40 years ago. Because I can text myself on my own blog, I feel like I'm using dead time to connect with extended family, work colleagues and a young daughter who hasn't learned to read. She just might Google herself in another decade and discover what I thought about her growing up. (Mia, you must stop your go-to-bed tantrums.) More than anything else, blogging is a portable desk for me. More than half of the entries on my Typepad blog were done on a Nokia phone. I have tapped in thousands of blog entries and sent them straight up onto my blog, normally using the mail-to-blog service offered by Six Apart. It works because it appeals to my lazy side. Pocket blogging has become part of my lifestyle and it has defined me. By careful uses of the English language, I can couch criticism of elephants in the room and the people who deserve a rant get an anonymous and unlinked sideswipe. In actual experience, my blog posts can change the behaviour of several people all at once--people who think I'm talking about them, their business or their gadgets.
My spontaneous pocket blogging has taken on the air of electronic pamphleteering and I feel well-suited for that role as one of the senior Irish bloggers. Some day, I hope to earn a line in the index of an academic treatment of Irish microcontent. Based on emails I receive from lecturers I know in the Irish educational technology sector, a guidebook of Irish user-generated content can't be far away. What's unfortunate is how blogging itself is sliding down the scale of community connectivity, replaced by the instantism of Twitter and the group hugs of Facebook.
Previously: "Pocket Blogging". I am topgold on Twitter and Facebook.
