Openness

I'm sitting in a flat in Uppsala Sweden working on a paper for journal submission. It seems I've been working on this paper forever and I guess I have. I cut it down by 300-400 words on Friday. I enlisted the help of my good friend and colleague who is obviously the master of writing short concise direct academic prose (can one say prose?!). I suspect if he had a look at what I considered a cut down version of my paper he would see loads of potential for even more succinct phrases and sentences. But I'm happy anyway. 

I've been experiencing the 'open learning' philosophy espoused by my current university - you don't need a classroom to learn. No all you need is a computer and internet connection and the world is your learning oyster. So for the next week it will be Uppsala - a renowned academic or university town. I've also celebrated (wrong word really because it just passed almost unnoticed except for the 2.5% or so increase in my salary on 1 October) the half way mark of my current academic journey. In a strange way I'm preparing for the beginning of the end and realise that until my fieldwork starts things will pretty much be rather 'easy' and 'relaxed'. 

But the beginning of the end has also brought up thoughts about...so what then? What will happen when I finish this thing? Where will I be and who will I be? At the moment I feel as if I have no identify - everyone around seems so clear about who they are and what they are doing. Me...well its seems I am just open, open to whatever might come my way. Really? No, not really.