If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. - Ursula K. LeGuin

Monday, April 20, 2009

There Are Two Types...

...of people in the world: those that group people into categories and those that don't.

I'm a grouper, always have been. I group more than people of course. I've been known to categorize objects and issues and statements and food, to name a few. I enjoy figuring out what goes with what. Grouping is one of the things that I enjoy about qualitative data analysis--the ability to take snippets people have said, assign categories and then see what themes emerge when the statements are place together (or next to each other).

So my blogroll was getting out of hand and I realized I had still more blogs to add. I decided it had grown large enough that it was time for some grouping. The initial attempt can be seen on the right.

Of course grouping is both an entertaining and a frustrating endeavor and this was no exception. It brought up the question: how do you define a blog? Many blogs may have started out for a specific purpose but that purpose changes as the voice of the blogger grows and as his/her life changes. For instance there are several academic bloggers that I follow that have recently become mothers and now blog about both academia and mothering. In fact many academic blogs I follow touch upon both issues with regularity. In looking over my post labels, I found that I have blogged an equal number of times on "research" and "Angel" myself. So am I an academic blogger? a mother blogger? an academic mother blogger?

In short there is no perfect answer and the beauty of the blogosphere is that there is flexibility and that adaptation is the norm. Of course that doesn't stop my grouping tendencies, so I will continue to fuss over the blogroll and ponder the themes that emerge. However please let me know if you would like your category changed or if I inadvertently dropped you from the list.

7 comments:

Ianqui said...

For some reason I don't consider myself a mommy blogger AT ALL, even though I'm obviously in the group of academic bloggers who recently became mommies. Maybe your first identity is your most salient? Or the one you prefer for yourself? Even though I blog about my kid a fair amount, I don't see my blog as equally appealing to the mommy blogger and academic blogger communities (though the intersection, sure.)

drax said...

Whoo-Hoo! Top slot on the "Writing and the Arts" section of the blogroll! Well... it is called "Ichiban," after all. At any rate, koolness. Thanks!

Annie said...

It looks like you've broken the blog roll into useful categories. The most important thing is to make the breakdown useful for you. I've been considering breaking mine up, too, but that can also get unwieldy, keeping track, and deciding which category.

Julie said...

I don't blame you for wanting to arrange the blogroll. I've been wanting to arrange mine for ages, but get distracted and run off to other things. Sort of like cleaning house! I should use you as an example. Yours looks great.

MsPrufrock said...

As you probably know from reading my blog (can't remember how long you've been reading), I used to worry that I was no longer an infertility blog, but instead a full-on Mommy blog. Whatever. I talk about everything, to the point I wonder if anyone knows what the hell I'm on about half the time.

life_of_a_fool said...

I'm totally a grouper, too. Though I haven't actually updated my blogroll since I started my blog and read many more than what are listed.

I wouldn't mind being added -- I think I used to be on there? Of course, that's entirely up to you. . .

Brigindo said...

LOF- Of course you were on before. I knew I'd end up dropping a few by accident in the regrouping. So sorry... but you're back in place now!