Going forward, slowly, but never back

It's been a slow day today - very slow. I had a half-day yesterday and I think it messed up my head and my levels of production. I'm moving forward but it seems like it is all happening in slow motion. I work everyday but it never seems enough. I guess at this point in the game it's not enough that one is working you need to work productively and efficiently. What you write needs to be good writing rather than superficial, draft-like waffling. I'm currently re-visiting some analysis work I did in Nov/Dec. I am hoping to develop this into a proper analysis chapter. I look at the quality of the analytic and interpretative insights I offer and I can see it is just so...almost juvenile. It's a bit of writing, claims and statements and then some data to illustrate these, at times often outlandish, claims I'm making. Having just come out of a supervision meeting where my interpretations were subjected to critical scutiny and where it wasn't ok to simply make a claim and then add some data that sort-of had a connection to the claim - I can see how underdevelop this initial analysis attempt was. What did surprise me though, is that I had actually done a substantial amount of analytic work. I remember when I went to CT early this year I was rather embarassed that I didnt seem to have much analysis work to show - that 6 months after leaving the field I didn't have 'any' viable analysis to show. Just goes to show how I see the world - always half empty, never half full!

But this job is all about outputs - to hell with the process - just produce a thesis that is good enough and will stand up to the scutiny of the examiner. That 80 000 word document is all that is required at the end of this experience. That is how it feels at the moment anyway. And in order to produce that document I need to write, write, write but also produce quality writing - another thing all together. So I'm moving forward, always moving forward even if it's slowly at the moment but, maybe tomorrow, next week, the week after that it will be faster and of a higher quality.