Time
First off is another apology for the gaps in communications, this time it’s a family distraction with my ageing parents and care, I must take this chance to give a massive thank you and send love to the NHS for all that they do, please remember them when you vote next time.
With this blog I bring news of gains made with the draft and research in general, which is good news for progression but as it’s not been reviewed or accepted, I won’t put too many details as I know I’ll need to re-edit to make it ready.
That does bring me to thinking about the purpose of this blog again and how it should proceed. It’s a similar story to other blogs about the balance of putting the personal out there and sharing on social media as in sometimes that can be used against you. I see this blog as a combination of things of note, research diversions and random thoughts on the journey of both my practice and my PhD.
With that in mind the biggest story of this week is…
Time
My weeks have consisted of toing and froing to the hospital and with the way time works in hospitals it has been a very different space from the one I’d nearly established. Though that’s not to say that my mind has been quiet as I’m always processing thoughts, allowing the parade of random thoughts, thinking about how I can incorporate “x” into teaching practices and generally working on stuff in my head…I have missed time in front of books and the space of time to write and pace and write and pace. It has been a time spent differently and something I need to keep track of as self-directed research is now my full-time thing then I must consciously look at how I make time work for this.
There is a definite requirement to concentrate on making time and working in that space, to focus efforts on that time. I’ve found that I’m not very good at working in a grabbed 10-minute space as I have one eye on what’s coming next. This is exhibited in a previous blog as answering the simple questions took a bit longer than it should, whereas the more complicated ones seemed to take no time.
Think this is a very telling fact of where I am (was) in the journey, to help remember this, one of the research books gave some good advice summed up in two words:
“Press On”
Which is what I have been doing, think there is a lot to be said for just getting on and doing something rather than procrastination. I see that the progress I made the other day could have been done in 10 minutes but the thought processes that got me there to that point was an interesting journey that probably I’ll quantify as taking around 3 to 4 hours to process and sort. Not sure if this an age thing or just a stress thing, I’m not sure if this holds me in good stead or not, I know that there are older researchers out there, but did they come to it late as I did (only 2 years ago really) or have they worked with research from a younger age? I’m not sure of the importance of this anyway, does it matter? (maybe a future post?)
Making progress with writing and thoughts falling into place plus a breakthrough in finding a paper that didn’t fit (which I’ll try and write about soon) have all been other items of note these last few weeks, which is a good place to end.
Thank you for reading and any comments, feedback or musings please find me on here or socials etc..
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As we always need an image and as you can imagine making images also took a bit of a stumble, but I feel I’m starting back to that. I’ve completed the 100 masks piece I’d been working on as my covid art piece. I think every artist has to make some sort of Covid 19 piece so they can establish where their practice was during this unique time. In the first stages of it, I was teaching and competing my MA where my final MA piece made comment on it...the 100 masks one is a comment on the continuation of the times and my ruminations on it. Again I will write about this here as I see it as part of the urgent temporality practice.
I digress, this week’s image is a representation of the areas I’m exploring, researching and developing my practice towards. I’ve spread three different images across here and the socials. The images are timely with the current weather, they are of puddles. Which if you consider its base form is something that commands immediate attention yet will disappear in time so by its very nature is only transient.
You could say it has an Urgent Temporality.
I Thank You.