killing trees and creating calm in the chaos

I spent most of the morning yesterday trying to create some calm in my study. I'd become increasingly irritated that there were papers everywhere, in indiscriminate piles. What did I need, and what was significant about a particular pile? So a clean up was required. Underlying this practical motivation to see some of the white space that is my desk, was a deeper need to create a sense of calm in my chaotic mind. I'm trying to hold this whole freaking thesis in my head. I think about some aspect of it almost all the time and my head feels like its filled to the brim with disconnected bits of information that are nevertheless connected.

In the process of de-cluttering my study and hopefully my mind, I found the evidence that I've already killed a few trees in the process of producing this thesis. And there is more to come. One more chapter to write and then a full draft to prepare. 25 days to go. Here we go, go, go, go!

home or away?

It's been a slow-fast week. At some points I felt I was making good progress and then at other times everything seemed to be crawling along at a snails pace. I've found that I'm completely unproductive at home. I just can't focus or sit at my desk for more than 20 minutes before needing something from the fridge or getting distracted by some mundane thought that has just come into my head or the unfolded washing cluttering my lounge. It's a really frustrating position to be in because it means I can't enjoy the comforts provided by my living space while also working on my thesis. If I want to be productive I have to leave my home and travel somewhere to work. But, I get such solid work done either in the library or my favourite cafe in Obs. I've also realised that I need to spend more time on the task - and with this realisation hitting home I have to accept that I will have to spend time away from my home and cope with the unfortunate consequences on my time and bank balance.

some good advice

I got some good advice last week. The basic gist - I need to shift from thinking and talking about myself, my work, as being in deficit; not being good enough to meet the approval of the PhD police. As I see that freaking finish line ahead, I know that what I need to enable me to cross that line, is confidence and a strong belief that my work is solid, worthy and credible. I need to believe in what I have done and in the quality of what I have done. No more hedging and grovelling - I need to take the thesis my hands and present it as a true gift that I can be proud of. I have to stop thinking about what lies in the shadows, but focus on what is illuminated. This is the essence of the advice - LT can see all of this already, all I need to do is to see it in myself.

And I'm starting to feel a sense of pride, accomplishment, confidence - a little bit here, a little bit there - as I work through the chapters already written, reworking or reordering my arguments. I have something to say and at times I say it very convincingly and articulately. I have to take my writing, my thesis in my hands and hold it gently and firmly all at the same time.

The autumn leaves

It's autumn in Cape Town. Because oak trees line the walk ways at UCT you can't avoid the beautiful colours of the changing seasons. I like the yellows, oranges, reds and browns of autumn. Unfortunately Cape Town pales in comparison to how Europe celebrates the rustic and rich colours and textures of this season.

I'm back into my routine. I'm disciplined and productive sitting in my favourite calm space in the library at UCT. But my calm space can't protect me from the anxiety I still feel about my writing. I mostly feel like a fraud, like I've con'ed my way into this PhD and now, when I have to show my worth, my writing is letting me down - instead screaming adolescent, incomprehensible communicator. The most common way I've been describing my writing is dull, flat, uninspiring and definitely not elegant. I can see what is 'wrong' with my writing (as I've just described) but hell if I know how to 'correct' it. But I continue on. I'm in the process of cutting down my data chapters. I have to lose about 5000 words from each chapter. This is a seriously tall order, but it needs to happen. In the first edit of one of my chapters I was able to shed almost 2500 words. I've been less successful with the second chapter - I shed a meager 500 words off about 20 pages. I've been told to make my data descriptions crisper and get to the point I want to make quicker. In this way I can try and hold onto the quality of my data while shedding the excess, superfluous words. I sigh, but solider on, grateful that this journey, however treacherous, is slowly, but surely reaching its end point.

last day at the OU again

I'm sitting at my desk at the Open University for the last time. Well technical it's not the last time I will be sitting at a desk at the OU, but it's the last time I sit at my desk. Changes are underway in IET and for the the 'old' batch of research students, this means that we are being relocated. When I come back to the OU in September/October I won't come back to my old desk. I've taken down all my postcards and the hand-made drawings of my nephew and niece. I've cleared away all my personal artefacts, my cup is safely packed away in a bag. Now my desk looks almost identitical to those on either side of me. Slowly, it would seem, the world I knew as the OU is disappearing. Many of my cohort colleagues and friends are no longer students or are in other countries. So unlike when I left in September, this time it feels like it's for real. When I next return nothing will be as it was when I left - of course 'nothing' can be the same - but all resemblances of what it was like to be here will be gone - shattered and fragmented - only available to me through my memories and possibly the odd photo. I feel like I will have to hold the past four years in my memory because there will be nothing tangible or physical left to give it some meaning. It will all be sitting in my head, almost like a construction - real but imaginery too.

I'm glad I'm going home...Only two more sleeps I tell myself. I've started to work actually, in the last dying days of my stay. Working through my data chapters - the ones I need to cull. I'm reworking, reordering, rewriting sections of texts or simply marking up text that needs to be cut or rewritten. The beginning of the very end. It feels good, but also sad. I've been a PhD student for such a long time now, what will I do when I'm no longer that? What new identity will I have to get used to then?