Life's rich tapestry

I've had a hard week. I've been writing a paper I wasn't ready to write. I've had to truncate what is usually a leisurely process. It was a chore not a pleasure. I've still not finished it but somewhere along the way I finally 'got' what it was I was trying to say. But this should have been worked out in other ways - here or in my journal or in a conversation of some sort. Not while I was writing the paper.

OK whinge over. It's Saturday morning. I've retired to my bed with a cup of peppermint tea and my laptop and... yes... THE SUN HAS GOT HIS HAT ON. I am, to use the vernacular of the day, living it large.

Doing alright for northern trash

Jonah played me this the other day and I thought it was fab. Roger Davies sings about the area I am from and I know he articulates the feelings of many of us in his songs. I was born in Huddersfield, moved away when I was 18, came back ten years later and have been here ever since. Recently I've been thinking about moving away again - something to do with turning 50, getting restless and bored and making fresh starts etc. That may still happen - much will depend on what turns up after I finish my PhD (something I've started to think about recently). But now if I leave, it will be with a heart full of gratitude not because of ennui and I also know if ever I hear this song it will awaken strong emotions. I'm becoming more and more interested in using different media to represent my research and hearing this is helping me to understand why. The title of this post is also that of another RD song and says so, so much about class identity, the 'classing gaze' and recognition.

On a different tack - M. I wanted to respond to your comment but my emails come bouncing back.

Displacement Activities

Well I've been up since 5.30 this morning (third day in a row - trying to catch up after spending two days in emotional turmoil at the beginning of the week - don't ask) and am still un-showered and in my dressing gown. It's come to a sorry pass when I regard getting dressed (or keeping clean) as displacement activity. Just before I started my PhD my supervisor warned me not to let it become 'an obsession'. She also reminded me yesterday that there is more to life than study. I hear her ... now all I have to do is listen.

I'm just a girl who can't say no

Almost a month since my last post. Where does the time go? At the moment I feel like taking time out to do this is both an indulgence and a necessity. It's an indulgence because I have two papers to write for various meetings and conferences in June, both on topics I know very little about. However, one of them (on Sen's Capabilities Approach) will prove useful for thinking round my thesis and the other (on the ethics of video-narratives, following on from the workshop I did) is something I'm very interested in. And also I am becoming ever more aware of the need to get some things published coz next year at this time I'm going to have to be thinking about jobs. Hence the title of this post. I did actually say no to some teaching last week - now that really was going to be too much. Ordinarily it might have been OK but the offer co-incided with a very challenging time for me in my other life as a mum, wife and ex-wife. I do tend to get teeth-gnashingly frustrated when I can't devote my whole self to my work and then I remind myself that one of the reasons I don't have much time for anything else is the the way academic life impinges on everything else. It is very hard not to conceive of work as making first claims on my time. When I worked in financial services I was able to take 'time out' because, for one thing, the office was shut and we could only take files off site in exceptional circumstances. This was a huge blessing and I miss being able to do that. So doing this blog is necessary because it sends a signal that there is more to life than theses, papers and conferences.

Ragpicking and Quilting

I continue to surprise myself. After a great deal of frustration I have now managed to change the template on my blog. And of course it was easy peasy lemon squeezy. This is a metaphor for learning of course - or learning as I understand it - where a bit of hard graft and thinking I'll never 'get' it is followed by the satisfaction of getting there anyway. Whether in this digital age, where everything moves so fast, this kind of learning model still has any relevance I don't know.

Anyhoo - I have chosen a sort of quilting theme (there wasn't much choice but this does fit in with my thoughts really). Having thought this is not an appropriate metaphor for my methodology (I used it when doing my MA dissertation), I have recently realised that in doing my thesis I'm still making a patchwork quilt - picking up bits and pieces and turning them into something else, hopefully something useful and beautiful. Quilting is of course a feminist metaphor and one I feel content to return to. This time I'm going to try to actually make a small quilt with a view to then presenting it at conferences instead of a written paper - the time feels right. Although I doubt my handicraft abilities, doing this blog when I thought I wouldn't ever be able to, has given me the confidence that maybe it'll be OK. I feel I have to try.

Swings and roundabouts

I haven't posted anything for a while because all my time has been taken up with stuggling with some of the ideas I've had about my thesis. It's been a bit of a business and seemed to take over my life. I don't recall doing anything for the past three weeks other than think things through, write them down, delete them and start again. However, on Monday I began a paper for a seminar that I had to do as part of the department's research training programme. I started by trying to give an overview and a bit of background to what I've been up to, which prompted me to return to my aims, objectives and research questions. In turn this prompted me to do a stock-taking of where I am. To cut a long story short, I then was able to clarify and crystallise some of what had been giving me sleepless nights. When I tried to find a metaphor for this process I came up with the title of this post. It's amazing how I seem to swing away from thoughts and concepts and theories only to return to them later. Or when it seems I have been aimlessly and unproductively going round in cirlcles I discover that I have been observing what is around me which has given me a richer perspective overall.

To put some flesh on these somewhat esoteric bones, I was writing and deleting paragraphs in my paper when it suddenly dawned on me that, actually, at one point ,I had known what I was aiming for. So, after returning to my original aims, I started writing in earnest, pulling out books I had read and returned to the shelf and notes I had made and then stuck in a drawer (being me, all alphabetically order and filed). I was still amending the paper when I delivered it on Thursday. Obviously it had its 'follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies' but it still made fundamental sense to me. I can now stop wondering what the heck I'm doing. And actually, I have always known. All that has happened is that I haven't stayed rooted to the spot. I've been on my travels but now I'm back with some of my old familiar ideas. I look forward to settling down with them and a cup of tea to negotiate how my adventures can be woven into our relationship.

What this means in practical terms is that the paper I'm doing for the DPR conference at the beginning of April suddenly seems do-able, although is miles off what the abstract said it would be. Hey ho.

Becoming a PhD student

I've been on a workshop! And I, yes the person who is still amazed she can switch a computer on and never learned how to work a video recorder (remember those?), have now made a series of short 'movies'. I have taken Alan Bennett's 'Talking Heads' as my inspiration as I am obviously a Puritan at heart. I assure you, it was an aesthetic and methodological decision and not just coz I am rubbish at technology. In fact I have rather taken to this moviemaking malarky.

During the workshop we were asked to reflect on the critical incidents that have peppered our research journey, our becoming a PhD student. I also used it as an opportunity to do something for the blog. And it has certainly given me much food for thought on what I am prepared to reveal as well as raising certain ethical issues (of which more later). In short it dovetailed with all the issues I was hoping to work with by having a blog in the first place.

This is the first clip and I talk about how my journey began.