Of elephants and ants (Part 1)

Last night I panicked. I worked on an abstract and the structure of my PhD thesis. By the time I finished I felt overwhelmed. Catastrophe thinking kicked in and within an hour I was ready to give up, doubting my ability to even start writing, doubting my ability to create a suitable structure, double-guessing versions of a dismal future.

I had looked at the elephant, and I was scared.

For those who haven't heard of elephants and ants, it's a handy way to categorise any undertaking.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

How do you eat ants? You wait until you've gathered enough to make a decent mouthful.

My emails are ants.

My thesis is an elephant.

Now I've realised it's an elephant I have stopped panicking and started analysing. I know I've eaten an elephant before. 

In Crossfit language, producing my thesis is just like doing a year-long chipper WOD [WOD = Workout Of the Day; chipper = keep chipping away because it's long and usually looks impossible]. Pretty terrifying unless you have a strategy together with focus, determination and enough common sense to set a sustainable pace. But with those ingredients, it's not easy but it's doable.

I have an abstract. I have a narrative flow. I even have a sketch of the mosaic I plan to make to illustrate both the journey and the destination of my PhD.

Tomorrow I revisit my work plan. I buckle up and knuckle down. I can visualise handing in my thesis on the last working day of 2019. It's going to be an awesome 15 months. 

I have found my tribe!

Today I found my academic tribe.

It is not a tribe of methodology. It is not a tribe of topic. It is the tribe of the neurodivergent. 

It is my tribe because I don't have to worry about how to present myself. It's where I can be myself among academics. 

I have an academic tribe. I am content. 

De-skilled or ...

I had a disconcerting patch recently where I thought I'd lost all my skills. Suddenly I found myself asking questions and checking everything, even tiny details, because I was no longer certain what to do and I was fearful of making mistakes. 

Initially I put it down as a loss of confidence and a dose of good old-fashioned imposter syndrome. But sometimes when this intense questioning and checking happens, it isn’t actually about a loss of confidence or skills, or poor judgement.

Sometimes that’s simply a recognition that the landscape and the map that we thought were in operation are not those by which others around us are operating. What we are doing as we question and check each tiny detail is mapping a newly-encountered landscape.

We haven’t lost our confidence.

We aren’t deskilled.

We are simply mapping out a new territory, using the perceptions of those around us and the skills and confidence we bring with us from navigating known territories.

When I left Hereford

I'm still experimenting with styles. 

I blogged before about how I use writing to work out what I think. That's still true for how I approach data analysis; writing is a key element of analytic work. 

Here, I've used writing to work out what I am thinking and feeling. I wanted to see what happens if I use artifacts as a lead-in to exploring things that are less tangible.

When I left Hereford, I kept my first toy. Yellow Ted travelled with me. He grew up with me as I grew into an adult, and a parent myself. Technically he is now my husband's. I could think of no greater gift of myself to him than the one who saw all as I grew up. My own memory of childhood is almost non-existent.

My father died, and I have been clearing the family home. I found the loft toys. I had remembered none of them. Yet as they emerged from the loft, parts of my childhood emerged with them and I remembered me as a child holding them and playing with them. These flashes of first-hand childhood memory left me motionless, not breathing, then blinking. So different from all previous, second-hand childhood memory, my dissociative dispassionate observation of another life, a different child.

Yellow Ted is now back where he belongs. With the toys from the loft. With the cot duck, floppy bunny, the spirograph, and Cubby who was too delicate and precious to be allowed to play with me. 

The loft toys did not grow up. They remained in my childhood. And my childhood remained as separate from the adult me as the lofted toys remained from Yellow Ted.  

Those flashes of me as the toys emerged from the loft are the first taste of a me that crosses the generations within me – child, young adult, parent to children. I am disconcerted, scared and curious. 

For now, cot duck and Cubby sit on the mantelpiece at home. Their friends are back in their storage bag. There is only so much memory one can handle at a time.

Experiments in creative writing

I'm planning to start writing my thesis at some stage (!) and that means practising choosing words and conveying meanings and feelings.

I've started experimenting with different styles and techniques. Here's today's creative piece.

"Sitting on the dock of the bay" is swimming in my brain and under my breath as I sit in the cold air, warm sun of a very different dock. Back to the water, face to the Dylan Thomas centre. Mind wandering and meandering in a style worthy of the old alcoholic himself. 

My meandering is gentle, kindly, lightly turning my attention to sensory input then releasing my attention, relaxing and awaiting the next thought. I wonder if the poet in him sat, relaxed, observed, released, crafted in the sun. I don't imagine him relaxing and sitting and waiting for the words to form. I imagine him tense, coiled, wired, multiple thoughts, plucking his chosen words from the torrent of his mind. 

I sit. I relax. I observe. My dock, my bay, my Swansea.

When duty calls

It's time for another life check. That’s when I check whether 'what matters to me' is reflected in how I spend my time, energy, money, other resources. It’s also when I take stock of whether I have a good handle on what resources are available in my life, how much is required for non-negotiables and whether my goals are a suitable size for the available resources. It’s what I call checking my ‘time investment’ (as opposed to time management – I’d hate to get to the end of my life having managed my time amazingly but on things that didn’t really matter).

And right now, I need to factor in another calculation. Right now, my actions are not going to align with the bigger picture of what matters to me. And now is not the time to re-align them. This is a time in my life for investing in things that are the right thing to do because they are my responsibility. And my challenge is to be self-aware enough to know I have chosen freely to prioritise duty over what really matters to me. And my challenge will be to keep one non-resentful eye on the bigger picture so I don't forget who I am and what matters as I plough through a time of prioritising things that don't align with what really matters to me.

Why do I bother with duty? Why do things I don't particularly want to do? Why work hard on things that won’t help me towards my bigger picture goals? Because while what matters to me is important, I am also a social creature and I live in community. And sometimes duty needs to come first. And because sometimes, the doing of duty is the only opportunity we will get to develop the character we will need to achieve what matters.

So I sit with my blank page. I look at the next months, the next two years. I think of what I've been experiencing as growing and conflicting pressures. My pen is poised. And I think:

·         What resources do I have?

·         What rhythm do I need days and weeks to have so I can stay healthy and renew my strength?

·         What is my big picture?

·         What is my immediate duty?

·         And therefore what needs to become my immediate picture?

·         How do I choose to allocate resources?

·         And, most importantly, how do I become more me through this battle? How do I emerge victorious, with clear sight and a clear conscience? And battle it is, to let go of what matters to me for this season of my life for the sake of what I see as my duty. 

Why I joined a union

Why I've joined a union

I first became self employed because I couldn't work in a 'proper' job because of family circumstances and my own mental health. It suited me down to the ground - but only because I have a husband who at that time had a reliable employed income. 

Later I ran a microbusiness as owner/director. Now I'm working for a small cooperative I helped found.

Along the way I discovered coworking and twitter as ways to build networks, develop a sense of solidarity with other microbusiness and self employed people, and deal with the isolation that can come with no office space. I met Indycube that way too.

As one person, it is easy to be picked off. I've met skilled graphic designers, videographers and speakers who will work below the living wage just to secure work. I've heard of people driven to food banks by late paying customers. 

I firmly believe in cooperative principles. I support mutual aid and shared, mutual self-help over charity and hand-outs. 

And I support anything where those of us at the coal face of the economy can have a voice in policy discussions, debates and decisions about work. 

I don't have time or emotional energy to do that for myself. I'm too busy being part of a microbusiness, and it's not something I'm particularly skilled at doing. That's one reason for me joining the new Indycube Community union. They do what they are good at - speaking up and representing us - while I get on with what I'm good at.

The union isn't just idealistic talk or speaking out on our behalf. They've identified with us union members some key practical issues that make life harder for microbusinesses and self-employed people - isolation, late payment, legal support and what happens when you're too ill to work. In true cooperative style, Indycube Community has found ways we can work together to share the load. This means that by joining the union, I don't need to fight for payment or against unfair terms by myself. I can use the coworking spaces when I want the company of like minded-people. And there's even a chance to join a mutual scheme where we all pay in and can all get help if too ill to work. It's back to the future. It's what happened in Welsh communities before social security. It's what self-employed people need again today. 

The idea of a union for independent, self-employed people is a bit radical. So they are offering a no-money trial membership. I was going to say a free trial, but it isn't. Indycube Community is its members. If we put nothing in, all we will get out are the monetary benefits not a strong voice and representation. We need to put in our support which means replying to emails asking about life as a self-employed person and telling others about the new union.

Here's a link to join. http://www.indycube.community/join-us/ Please don't join out of selfish self-interest. Join because we are #strongertogether and the UK needs us to be heard.