I stopped myself from using the word “parenting” at the end of that last sentence after a sudden realisation that I hate the word. Parenting is one of those horrible nouns-forced-into-verbs that exist only for officialdom to use as replacements for more emotive and meaningful words. When a father mends a bike, changes a nappy, or beams with pride at his child’s latest achievement, he’s not “parenting”, he’s being a dad.

I am spending a fair amount of my time being a dad, of late, and my blog has obviously reflected this. I, like Dan, kind of baulk at the idea of being confined by the definition of being a “daddy blogger”. I think specialising too much in that way limits creativity and interest for both the author and the reader.

Those who know me well will know this isn’t my first blog. My previous blog was, ostensibly, about a fairly specialist subject, but I made a big effort not to to be constrained by that subject when I wrote for it.

I like to think that it was for that reason I picked up many readers who didn’t have the slightest interest in the over-arching subject of my blog, including (probably) people like Dan himself. I also like to think that they might have learnt interesting stuff about the specialist topic I was blogging about which they would have never have been exposed to if I’d confined myself to blogging about just that topic.

God, I’m being terribly vague aren’t I? But I’m afraid when you’re on the run for revealing US military secrets that’s the nature of the beast.

So, anyway, call me a daddyblogger if you will, I’m more than happy to be counted as part of that crowd. But don’t expect every post to be about my thoughts on fatherhood, and definitely don’t come here looking here looking for examples of “parenting”!

Like an oyster, sometimes it ends up with a pearl.

Which is often how good blogging works. You have an idea during the day, and by the time you come to write it down it’s grown and blossomed into a fully fledged group of linked thoughts and concepts.

Except when you use Twitter. Rather than giving things time to grow and develop, Twitter lifts the irritant idea straight out of your head like a scuba-diving tick bird picking grit from an oyster. This is dangerous, and often ends with brains totally unable to invent realistic metaphors that don’t, for example, involve scuba-diving tick birds.

Okay, so Twitter isn’t really going to kill blogging, but it has forced me to think about how I can both blog and tweet without one spoiling the other. Twittering, despite the vast archives that are forming, feels ephemeral, and a lot of big ideas are being lost in the noise.