Response in the form of bulleted lists: a flash of light in the dark?

My parents are in Sweden for the semester. You can follow their adventures at http://bishopssweden.blogspot.com/ You'll notice a certain similarity between their blog and mine.

My Dad has said that the key to blogging seems to be short posts with lots of bullet points and photos. Using this strategy he has been able to plan out many blog posts in advance, which of course is enabling him to blog very consistently.

• Bullet points
• Lots of pictures

You'll notice my blog isn't big on pictures. I like pictures, it's just that I am not keen on borrowing them from other folk's sites, neither do I have the attention span necessary to suss out whether a particular image is borrowable or not. Borrowable? I'm surprised spell-check is accepting that one. At one time I was posting photos of my children, especially since it was a convenient way to share images with family members far away.  Then one day I realized that as open as I am willing to allow my life to be to scrutiny, posting pictures of my children on the internet might not be such a grand idea. It isn't just my privacy at stake, but theirs as well, and at this stage they can have no say in the matter. And it's a cruel, cruel world that dominates our understanding of the universe.

And I'm so very, very text-based, you see.

But I'm intrigued by this idea about bullet points. I wouldn't use them in the same way that he is, though he uses them to good effect in terms of what he is doing. What I think I've realized is that bullet points might be a strategy I can use to organize my thought. Surely they are a useful tool for study.

For example, I read an article last week in a collection of essays written by Ursula K. LeGuin. The article was called "Indian Uncles," published in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Reader, the Writer, and the Imagination. I think it's a really great book, by the way. Anyway, there were a couple of paragraphs in the essay that I really responded to, and I wanted desperately to say something about those to paragraphs, share them with you on a Saturday morning. I started writing, typed up the selection in question, and then was stymied, not knowing what to do next, how to proceed, how to make this brief commentary of mine into a complete and readable text. It does not good to quote someone at length without doing something with what they have said. This is a practice that has driven me away from reading certain other blogs.

That post remains in my drafts file. It may never be finished now. But what if I went back and looked at what it was I responded to? What if I made bullet pointed notes about what LeGuin was saying, and why it mattered to the context from which I was reading? What if I then responded myself, for myself in the form of bulleted notes? It's what I have been trying to do all along in my studies, but never have quite managed to. It is in essence what I do when I approach my current study of Leviticus every morning.

Responses to texts can be hard to come by. I value them. I desire them. I have a horrendous time trying to produce them.

Perhaps bulleted points could take place of the outline, because there is something in the idea of a formal outline that holds no practical appeal for me.

My blog isn't going to look like my Dad's blog. Not in its content. Not in its approach. Why? Because we aren't the same person, and we aren't trying to accomplish the same thing. That is okay.

Do you know this? Do you believe it?

I think that I am slowly and gropingly, haltingly making my way into those modes and approaches that will work specifically for me. Slowly, certainly slowly, progress is being made. And that is a good thing.

I haven't made a bulleted list yet, not in the way that I have envisioned for myself, but it is coming. I just have to let the idea germinate a little longer.