Week One!

My first week of working on Draft 1 of my thesis has already come to an end. It's the first week of work since I returned to Cape Town and a good month since I did any serious work on my thesis. It was a fairly productive week considering that I was also trying to buy a car, get my stove fitted into the existing kitchen units, resolve a long standing administrative glitch associated with my medical aid and get a range of niggly little odd jobs finished in my flat. It was a week of major distractions. Last Sunday I worked out a work schedule that would take me from the five individual chapters I had already written to a cohesive Draft 1 of my thesis containing a total of seven chapters in just under eight weeks. Allocating different tasks to each week made me realised just how little time I actually had. Previously, I imagined that eight weeks was a rather generous time frame. Mid-way through the week I realised that in future I need to construct a weekly work plan to guide my tasks and activities - simply working toward an ideal goal of 'Finish Research Methodology Chapter' is really just providing the right amount of rope I need to hang myself.

So back to work and it feels pretty much the same as it did in England - except I can't quickly walk over the field to the OU when I want some human interaction or to print whatever I've written. In many ways I've imposed a form of self-isolated because I haven't made any conscious plans to see my friends or old colleagues. But it's easy to pop down to my family for a quick catch-up chat or hot meal and intersperse this with my work activities. I guess it feels more balanced and I know I will become more social as my routine becomes entrenched and I feel more confident about the progress I'm making. In a strange way I miss the familiar what was my working life in England and the OU - I miss my friends - the tea breaks with SB (and the recently the cuddles with MM) the frappes with KC, coffee in the Hub with SP, the phone conversations with JT and the cynical but deeply funny chats with BD. It will get better the more settled I start to feel. I just want to make progress and see the coherent entity, that will be my thesis, start to emerge. When that starts to happens I know I will be on my way...