Next Steps - Sept20

Here we are in September and quite honestly how the heck did we get to here?

It’s seems a blur to get to this point, it seems like it’s flown by yet dragged so much, March was such a long year..

To be completely honest I’m not sure where I’m up to, having handed in the MA on the 4th of August, taken a bit of a break then back into work for this first time since March after Covid with another move.

It’s made time very regimented with the effect of making things incredibly busy side effect of making other things quiet and the reason I’ve been under the radar. The socials have mainly been the ones to suffer; some days just not had the time, others not the inclination…while I don’t subscribe to the notion that time spent away from the digital realm is definitely a good thing, it has felt good to gain a bit of headspace and good for my mental health not to see all the current news as the bleakness of this world we live in can leave you with a darkness that’s not easy to shift. Also been eating better and exercising, cleaned up a little, so feel a little leaner and ready to face the new academic year.

Although I will say that even though I’ve been pretty caught up in stuff, I’ve still been producing work; some new work on borders, paths with a time-lapse element and a self-portrait piece on toxicality have all featured in the last few weeks, just got to process them, review them, then put them out there.

I thgink that’s another thing the MA has give me, it’s made me want to produce work towards a final piece, studying on the course has really honed my work in I’ve added in an extra theoretical edge I was looking for, I feel I’ve gone from “just” a photographer, to a researcher with a camera and I’m looking to feed all that into an research and exploring a subject with the next step onto a PhD. Loved the theory side and have got a few ideas than I can explore, along with a couple that i could explore. I’m still at an early stage with the choosing of topic, I’ve tried to give myself advice as if a student had come to me, the advice l would give is to finalise a topic, write, research and read so that’s what the plan is for the a few months.

One of the main blockages in subject choice has been that I’m stuck in-between 2 stools of thought here, I’m having the battle between “the burning desire” versus “the need for the piece of paper” and i imagine will rumble on.

I feel that I can study in a variety of fields from a projected subject to one of my own choosing, there are almost too many options for progression here. Which in all honesty is a nice place to be so I’ll update on this journey here and hopefully manage to blog quite regularly.

Thanks for reading.