The Holding Pen

There's a first time for everything.

I now have a 'holding pen'.

I've finally created a workable structure for the thesis, via telling myself it isn't some kind of mystical intellectual thing into which I must squish everything I have learned; it's just a book for academics - and I've written books before.

I have an archive folder for past versions and things no longer needed for the thesis but that are worth preserving.

I have a folder for each section of the thesis. Most of the previous files have moved either into one of these sections or the archive or been deleted. In a couple of instances, I have emailed information to someone before deleting the file because it seems of value (just not to me) or I love it and can't let go but know I need to relinquish it in order to free my brain for completing the thesis. After all, finding a structure that works is often a case of rearranging the furniture and consigning some to the charity shop, some to the tip and gifting some things you love to someone who will appreciate them more than you. It's rarely a case of going to Ikea* and buying new furniture from scratch.
[*In the interests of balanced blogging, other places do exist for buying furniture - or so I'm told - but they don't have the meatball experience]

I have a new kind of folder which I am calling my holding pen.

This is a folder of things I have written or papers I have downloaded that don't have an obvious role in the new structure but as the writing of the thesis develops it may turn out that they hold useful, even vital, thoughts or citations or pieces of text. They are sat in a liminal space, neither part of the thesis nor ejected from the thesis.

I like the concept of a holding pen. It has a dynamic feel. I can imagine the sheep at market, jostling around, waiting to be moved to their destination, neither belonging to their previous owner nor their new owner but in that moment of suspense between the two.

I've used a Pending folder in the past. But that, to me, implies pressure to deal (and risks a visit from its demoralising sibling of 'failure to have dealt' when anything languishes in pending too long).  It's like the 'in tray' or 'to do list' that stares accusingly at you.

I'm excited for this new stage of thesis production. I'm excited and I confess sometimes intimidated by the scale of the task ahead. I think I'd be less intimidated if I could focus all my attention on the thesis - and if I had somewhere better than the crowded family breakfast table to work. But every doctoral student has their own sources of intimidation, and I will find my way through mine.

At least creating a holding pen has removed the intimidation of the pending folder.

The Venn diagram that maybe isn't

After this morning's joint supervision, I have three categories in my head:

• The story I want to weave for my examiners (ie what goes in the thesis)
• The things I want to write about academically
• Ideas I want to discuss with people* and ideas I want to tell people*

*people = a set of people in the policy world; a set of people in the inclusive research/disability studies/coproduced research world; my long-suffering Barod colleagues

In an ideal world, I can't help feeling that the three should overlap to form one perfect circle, possibly with artistically blurred edges as there are no beautifully neat all-sewn-up stories in the social world - or at least not ones that stand the test of exposure to everyday life.

In my anxious world, I fear that I have three things that do not overlap at all - and, worse, that I have no clarity about what is encompassed by any of these categories. It feels less like 'going down the rabbit hole' and more like 'rabbit caught in the headlights'.

If I think of these categories as distinct but overlapping, I have a Venn diagram.

If I think of them as appearing visually distinct but forming a single entity, I have something closer to an amoeba. 

And herein lies my problem.

Like the 'arms' (pseudopodia) of an amoeba, the three categories won't keep still! Ideas flow within the amoeba creating movement and changing which category any particular thought might be assigned. And any attempt to subdivide an amoeba into its constituent parts are doomed to failure as it is a single-celled organism. 

So...

Time to stick the amoeba under the microscope and take a photo. And then stick the photo at the front of my thesis, along with a photo that magnifies the part of the amoeba that I want to describe and write about within the thesis. 

Or maybe there is another analogy that will carry the weight of the challenge better. I do like the idea of storytelling, and it feels a bit as if I am grappling with constructing a Silmarillion when The Hobbit will do quite fine by itself. J R Tolkien needed to see his mythical world to be able to write his story, but the reader can make sense of The Hobbit without needing to have pre-read the Simarillion. 

And perhaps that is what has happened. Before I could settle to write the story for my examiners, I needed to have a clear picture of my own version of the mythical world I call 'the social world'. 

I have got to stop circling and perfecting my mythical world to my satisfaction and get writing - or at least drawing. Whether it's a Venn diagram, amoeba or mythical world, I need to stop poking around trying to label it and START PRODUCING