Changing Focus of this Space

Well hello, dusty blog. Haven't seen you in a while. Am considering re-visiting on a regular basis, yet again, and connecting to my latest hobbies where I can flex my creative muscles: knitting and writing music. The latter has been on hold for a while; the former has quickly turned into a bit of an obssession. 

Connecting hobbies with my work as a researcher will help me sort out how my brain processes information. For me, the process of learning something new not only informs the new tasks at hand, but also I can reflect further on how I learn, process, and manage various bits of information. 

Perhaps I'll use you as a spot to work out any issues I'm having in my brain. I don't suspect this site will generate much readership, nor is that my goal. Likely I'll write to you, O Blog, as a way to have a routine audience for my intellectual ramblings from time to time. 

And also, I like how well connected blogs are to Ravelry, the databases of all things knitting and yarn. 

Establishing a Routine around Clutter

I haven't written in a while, and I miss it. So I may just start up writing in the old blog after a long hiatus away. There's a chance this may even be read by someone else looking for something to read online, though that's not why I've kept this blog. I've kept it for me, and I keep it semi-public as a measure of accountability so I feel motivated to write something, once in a rare while.

 

During this pandemic I'm thankful to be alive, healthy, awake, employed, married, and relatively content. I do miss freedom of movement without fear of getting sick, but this feeling shall pass. I don't enjoy wearing a mask, so perhaps that's a good motivator to just stay the hell home. I'll wear it if I need to, don't get me wrong.

 

I do want to get a bit more routinized . I don't have many intentional routines I follow, and yet I'm a relatively orderly person. I do think being intentional about routines may help me stay focused at work and in various aspects of my life. It may start as just stretching out or, gulp, exercising in the morning, to just rituals on how I keep my at-home work space clean and orderly. I can live with a lot of clutter, as I've mentioned like gazillions of times in the history of this blog. That's a blessing and a curse for me. I enjoy being orderly, but it's not a requirement for me to be productive. So I end up ignoring it, but it makes me a bit blue to see the clutter. Not a productive cycle.

 

Anyhow, time to get to work today, here at my safe, albeit cluttered, home audience. Hope you enjoy your day.

Overwhelmed, so staying in the present

I appear to have missed the entire month of March. And now we're almost all the way done with April. Guess my dissertation must be finished? Oh yeah. :-)

However, it's not quite finished...I mean, the research behind it isn't finished, and I do want to get my brain back into the piece again so that I can spin off an article or two. That would be pretty cool.

But the notion of carving out a bit of writing time during the work week has been put on hold since that last post. Work has really taken off during a time of transition between leaders. It's not a bad thing, but I won't say it's all that great either. I don't think I've ever been stretched more thinly in this job in the last almost-four years. I may have lost a bit of my edge in the process...for example I have a ton of e-mail to get through today. A ton. I should probably just delete everything and then send a note out to everyone I work with asking them to get in line and ask me for my assistance one at a time. Hahahaha. I'll keep dreaming about that type of organization.

I'm thankful to have a job, and also to have a career. Those two things have not necessarily been in sync for me in the past. I have been trying to determine my future career moves now that I'm finished with the doctorate, but I think that process has proven fruitless and useless. I'm not a mind reader; I cannot predict the future. No use in spinning my wheels on it anymore. Guess I should just focus on the present for a while. That's not an easy thing for this big-picture thinker, but it'll probably keep me sane the next few months during this work transition.

Email time. Wow. Lots and lots of email.

I miss writing

I guess it's no surprise to me that I miss having an excuse to write. After all, when spending a long while as a student, and when successfully completing Mission Dissertation, there was a whole lot of satisfaction out of the writing process. As I recall from the few years after I finished my master's degree where I hardly did any decent writing at all, I grew to miss that side of my brain. So at this point when I've not yet lost it (at least I don't think I've lost it just yet!), I probably should do something to continue onward with my writing.

In my present job as a researcher, I'm required to conduct small studies and write up the results, but honestly the writing is minimal and hardly read by anyone. In fact, I am in a position working with busy administrators that if my writing is too verbose or too, um, "good", then I risk that my colleagues won't even read the work I've done. They need results of research mined down to very small, easy-to-digest, bites so they can make decisions. I'm happy to provide them with this, but honestly it doesn't do much for me as a writer or a scholar.

Finally, the only way for a researcher really to gain credit for the work she or he does is to share up formally-written results and get them published. The only problem is that in my present job there isn't a whole lot of room in my schedule to close my door and do some good solid writing without some sort of interruption. Since I am not a faculty member, I'm technically not supposed to go away to a coffee shop and work on my own during the day. That would be nice and all, but it's not really been an option.

So I'm going to try and carve out small bits of time during the work week, perhaps Friday mornings, to be better about writing formal summaries of research I've conducted for my administrative colleagues and see if I can get things published. It won't be an easy balance, but then again neither was the balance of working full-time and completing a dissertation on the side. We'll see how this goes. Earlier I mentioned I may explore a faculty position, but as things seem to be falling out right now, I think I'll continue to cultivate my career for another year or so doing what I do as an administrative researcher. I will teach a class or two on the side, and I'll try to write and publish what I can. The nice thing is, if I don't get something written or published then it really only affects my sanity and not my actual job. That's probably going to be a better fit for the way I see my future career merging with my very busy home life.

Who knows, perhaps I'll keep exercising my writing chops a bit more by writing more in this blog?

Diploma

My diploma arrived last week! So today I bought a fancy frame, and I have to admit that I can't stop looking at it. I crack me up.

But it's ironic that the external symbol of the completed degree and "commencement" arrived last week because I also had a few serious discussions with others about the future of my career. While I like the job I have currently, I've always known it won't be the job in which I retire. This clearly brings up the question: "NOW WHAT?" I envisioned staying here about five years and then moving to a different administrative position in higher education. However, at this point that feels like a waste of my research skills. While it took me a long while to finish the degree since it was rarely my top priority, I did enjoy the work a great deal. I think I'm a decent writer, too, and I do enjoy living in Theory World for good amounts of time. Fortunately given the administrative career I've had and the theoretical dissertation I wrote, I am starting to build a couple of different research agendas that could allow me to balance a faculty career in between Theory World and Reality World, and I think I might like that balance. If I could build that into a faculty career, well that could be a decent future career.

There's a bit of a risk with the process of earning tenure. And, if that doesn't happen, then there I'll be in my mid-40s without a job. That's kept me from seriously considering this route in the past. But then again, several years ago the thought of writing a dissertation was daunting enough that I suppressed the thought of getting a Ph.D., and here I am. So what's so say pursuing the faculty route would be a bad risk to take? After all, most times we take well-informed risks, it leads to something pretty swell.

We'll see. For now I'm still pondering the possibilities, and I'm fortunate that Wife is encouraging me to continue the thought process as well.

Where was I?

Time flies when balancing the various components of life sucks the energy right out of one's brain cells. I'm finishing up the re-coding process. The more I do it, the faster I get with it. This is merely an organizational step that must be done in order for me to provide evidence toward the large chunk of the results chapter I've already written. Pain in the ass, but I'm almost there.

I've taken part of this week off from work to get it all done. It's been alright. Not as productive as locking myself away in a hotel was last summer, but certainly more affordable. It is helpful, also, to anticipate going back to work and not being so behind as I was after the summer time off I took. Today I'm in the library again, and it's going well.

Actually, I'm sort of entering a "summer" season at work because I just completed a large annual report. There are a few major tasks here and there, but I'm no longer launching anything new for quite a while. This is good.

Back to it, then.

Slow and Behind

I haven't posted here in a month. Probably because I really haven't worked on TFD in a month. We moved Moose into his new school today, which is GREAT. His school/therapy will finally get back into a routine, which will be good for all of us. [contented sigh]

I'm behind on a couple of projects at work, probably because I am constantly sitting in meetings to which I'm called or invited. Tomorrow I have meetings from 9:00 AM-5:00 PM straight through, save one hour in the middle of the afternoon. Seriously. I mean, I understand why we all need to meet together, but when exactly does one get one's work accomplished?

I am getting through some hurdles, though. Settling the school thing is good and removes some of the stress from my plate. Also, I attended a conference here in LSC and even did a workshop with my boss and a colleague. It went well, and it was important for me to attend this meeting. I made some new connections and revived a few that were dying off, so it was time well spent. Last year I attended this same conference, and it didn't feel like my time was well-spent, so this was a welcome surprise.

Assuming I indeed am able to plow through these next couple of projects and then finish a division-wide report by the end of next week, I will be able to take a week off (11/9-13) to focus on TFD. Finally.

And I thought I'd be defending the dissertation by Thanksgiving. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Honestly at this point I'll be surprised if I ever finish. I know it will probably happen, but I have absolutely no idea when.

Finally

Wife and child went to a birthday party in SCT today. As much as I would have enjoyed catching up with our old friends, I stayed back here at Chesterley to work on TFD (the fucking dissertation). I do look forward actually to attend weekend trips, parties and the like. Missing out on these things got old two years ago.

Moving on...

The last couple of weeks I've been catching up from what turned out to be a really hellish summer at work. Generally speaking, I've learned I don't acknowledge difficult times till they are over. Reflecting on the summer, while I am grateful for the time away from work I was able to take to make progress on TFD and for vacation, the summer itself was horribly busy, and far busier than I expected. In fact, I'm still catching up on a couple of summer projects, and fall semester classes started over a week ago. The time away probably contributed to the busy summer schedule at work, but it should never be said that life at a university is 'dead' over the summer. Au contraire, mon frere.

Moving on again, to today...

Since I've not made much progress during the work week on TFD due to said busy summer schedule, I felt somewhat justified in my choice to stay home from today's birthday party. And I'm glad I did. I think I actually have the basic structure lined up for My Theory on My Topic, which is, of course, the entire point of conducting a grounded theory study in the first place.

Finally.

Now I just have to get all the pieces lined up, find quotes to support these hair-brained ideas, and finish up this piece. I think I'm almost done. At least, I'm almost done with the draft of the results chapter.

Yeah, no big whoop. The thought of writing this up has only been on my mind for two years.

:-)

Thermostat

This is the first time in my thirteen-year career that I've had an office in which I can actually control the heating and cooling, reliably.

I just may never leave.

No go today

I did not get anything done on my dissertation today. Oh right: I do not write about my job on this blog. I won't say another word.

Summer Crunch - Day 1 Report

Thanks to everyone for your good words both here in the blog and to me directly via electronic mail. All words of support are very helpful during this time.

Life here at the hotel is good - it's been a good productive day. I finally cleaned up the early version of the Participants section. There was too much in there related to the deeper analysis and not enough of the surface descriptions of participants. Now I'm on a roll with finishing up the descriptions of each one, briefly but respectfully, knowing I'm going to develop the characters further in the analysis section.

I still need to contact the participants to see if they agree with my characterizations. That's intimidating to me, as it's been about two years since I started the interviews. Two years? Geez. Oh well, I'm just going to have to get over that and move onward. I think I've mentioned I found most of them on Facebook. I won't friend them, but if I can send them a message that way, then I will. Thank God for Facebook.

It sort of feels like I'm writing a play with 14 characters. Few if any of them have ever met, but so much of what they are saying relates to that of their peers in the study. Sort of interesting.

I'm glad I did this hotel thing. Usually I'm closing up my writing shop around 5 or 6 PM on a dissertation day away from work. Today was totally different: I worked at a slow but steady pace, really relaxed. I have ESPN on in the background for noise (I don't even know what sport is on the TV, since it's behind me). I even grabbed a quick nap mid-afternoon. I'm about to take a brief dinner break (frozen pizza, here I come), and then I'll just get back to it. If I get to a certain point this evening where I feel things have gone along really well, then I'll reward myself with a good beer (or two) that I have here in the fridge. Then I repeat tomorrow. I'm glad I'm finally getting through this stuff.

More good news: I was supposed to go into work Friday for a meeting that was scheduled for 3 PM. Who the heck schedules a meeting for 3 PM on a Friday in the summer?? I received a note today indicating it was canceled, so now I don't need to interrupt my work Friday. Yippee!

I do have a parent/teacher meeting at Moose's school tomorrow afternoon, but that'll be fine. For one thing, it's not work: it's parenting, so it's far more important and well worth the time away from the diss. Second, it will be a shorter break than the above meeting since it's located relatively near the hotel. Finally, I'm REALLY missing Wife and Moose right about now! It will be a nice break tomorrow to see them both.

Reality bites...

...but I'm grateful a) to have a job and b) to have a job I like a lot.

Note that I do not love the job. I like it alot. There is a difference.

Day 10 Report

Wednesday was yet another good day. I was back at the library, this time by myself, and was able to make good headway on shoving things into NVivo. I decided to take a BIG shortcut with all this, however, and not bother with recoding every single interview. I've already written summaries for each interview that will comprise part of the results chapter, so instead of recoding at the interview level itself, I'm coding the summaries. I mean, DUH! So I'm flying through those and expect to finish them up today, during Day 11. I also did something basic: I re-read my initial dissertation proposal. It had been a while, and it's bringing me back to the reasons for why I'm doing this study in the first place. Yet another helpful tool for finishing up the data analysis.

Another thing I realized: I don't want to go back to work next week. I wish I could just take an extended leave and keep plugging away. So that made me start thinking about the job a bit more. I used to think I love my job. At this point, I've reduced that down to Liking It A Lot. And you know, that's probably healthier. I don't need to LOVE it. It's stable, the pay is decent, and I do enjoy the work environment. So, liking it a lot is very helpful, in that it keeps me going back the next day...

I enjoy the dissertation study a great deal, and there are times I can see myself doing just this for a living (i.e. become a professor), but the thought of having to go through the tenure review process and do all this work and then still not know if I'll get there...I don't think it's really worth it for me at this point. Too many question marks. What I've realized from these couple of weeks away, however, is that I will need to find a lower-stress way to replace the sort of braining I'm doing now when (if?) I finish the dissertation. An intellectual outlet will be important, but that does not equate a big change in my career. Bottom line, in addition to making great progress on the study itself, I think I'm also making big progress on defining my relationship with my job and career.

Moving on: I wrote out a to-do list for myself between now and tomorrow. I meet with my first peer reviewer in under 25 hours. Time to kick some more ass and pull this shit together.

Day 4 Report

As promised, my Day 4 Report. And this time it's actually on Day 4.

I've been taking a day off from work each week to work on the dissertation since I started this job. I would say about 58% of the time I end up doing work-work from home instead of dissertation-work. And other times I've had to forgo the entire dissertation day and come to the office for Important Meetings. None of this surprises me, seeing the slow rate of progress I've made on the dissertation thus far this academic year.

In recent months, I've been taking Wednesdays as this work-from-home-on-the-dissertation day. So, since today was the first day where I've been able to work on the dissertation this week, it has felt like Wednesday. Oh yeah, it's really Thursday. Hoo boy. I must remember my dentist appointment tomorrow at 9:00 AM. I keep thinking that's in two days.

Anyway, the rest of the day was very productive. First, I did a bit more axial coding and made some realizations about one of my participants that was, well...let's just say I have a completely different, and deeper, understanding of this person's identity development. Bottom line, the exercise in axial coding continues to be extremely helpful.

Next, I attempted to reach out to my peer reviewers, whom I recruited last fall. I need to see if they are able to help me this semester, instead of last fall when I had initially asked for their help. I've not yet heard back, but that's no surprise given my e-mails to them were sent toward the end of the afternoon. Would be great to hear from them tomorrow or Saturday.

Finally, I decided upon the materials I will provide to said peer reviewers, assuming they still have the time for me this semester. This final step of deciding on what the hell I'm actually providing to my peer reviewers has allowed me to visualize the schedule for the rest of The Two Weeks. This is a good thing. My plan is to get each of them the set of materials by the end of next week. Deep breath. I can do this.

So Chad, per your comment on my prior post, I daresay I have indeed started kicking ass on this project. Finally.

I have two colleagues from SCT who are taking next week off (Spring Break) to work on dissertation tasks themselves, so we've decided to get together and work as a group in the library at least once or twice during that time. This should help keep the focus, accountability, and general dissertation ass-kicking in line. And then we can all get together for dinner afterward. Food and drink after long library days are good things.

To those of you who comment here: THANK YOU. While I write this blog entirely for myself as a diary, without any particular audience in mind other than me, it is good to know there are people out there who are actually reading. Comments are most welcome.

Off to do a bit more axial coding before bed. Bye.

Day 3 Report

Day 3 involved more catch-up time from worky. I know, not the point of the Two Weeks. So, sue me.

At long last, as of about 10:30 AM today, I finally feel caught up from feeling behind in my work the past couple of months. It's as if a huge weight has been lifted and I can just focus on the dissertation without feeling any of the lovely Italian/Jewish guilt that surges through my blood at all times. Well, at least for the time being, the guilt feelings are numbed by the accomplishments of the day. They will re-appear, rest assured.

Fortunately, this last work-related project involved delving into some of the literature I'm using in my dissertation, so in many ways I have been dissertating since the middle of the afternoon yesterday. And while I was reading this brainy literature on epistemological reflection and inter/intrapersonal development, I kept thinking: Hey, I get this. I can do this. I am finishing this.

I finished said project earlier this morning, and then I had a good work-out. Needed that. Came home and had lunch, waved to Wife who came home from work early, and now I am here at Large Ubiquitous Chain Coffee shop near Chesterley for the rest of the afternoon.

So, now what do I do? I asked Wife this very question. She gave me the old, "How do you eat an elephant?" question. One bite at a time. Yeah, I know. Gee thanks. :-)

Gotta get some structure around my tasks for the next several days. My plan is to update the blog later this evening sharing whether or not I have developed a decent structure for the next week-and-a-half of work ahead of me. And away we go.

Day 2 Report

Hi. Day 2 went really well. It was all work-work, but I got on a roll with getting a lot of this shit done. Maybe I should call this Get the Shit Done week. I have really one more task to do for work-work, and then I can put work-work to bed for a while. Not easy for me to do...I'm pretty committed to work-work. But they'll live. I'll live. It'll be fine.

Allergies are getting a little better, but about two hours prior to the end of my 12-hour decongestant, I need it again. So I have a lousy four hours per day (sparing the cyber world the details), but then I take the damn drugs and it's fine. I am sick of this, though. This never happened to me before moving to SCT, and I'm not pleased they have followed me here to LSC. Need to get back to the doctor. But, it can wait till after the Two Weeks.

Tomorrow I shall finish the one last task. I shall go to the gym. I WILL start on the dissertation work, hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow. Can't. Wait.

Day 1 Report

I finished Day 1 of my two weeks. It went OK yesterday. I got out of the house and worked at a cafe I don't like very much, but at least my buddy Dave was commiserating with me. I was finishing up stuff for work, so I haven't delved into the dissertation yet. I have one more day of work-work to do before I feel my plate has cleared enough to focus on the diss.

In other news, I was feeling like CRAP over the weekend and much of yesterday. I pulled a tendon or somethingorother in my upper back, and my allergies were attacking my head so that my head felt stuffed up and my glands felt a little swollen. I was grumpy. I also had not hit the gym in about a week, for various reasons. That was my first time since the beginning of November not going to the gym at least twice per week (except for a small hiatus during Christmastime). So, I went to the gym last night. And today, I feel better. Yep. Head is draining. Pain in back is gone. Sigh. I guess this exercise stuff really works.

Day 2 involves heading to the library to get through grading papers for the class I was teaching (note that's in the past tense now) and finishing up a report. Perhaps I'll get into analysis work by the end of the day.

Oy

Spring break is over. I made a ton of progress this week...on my job. Not on my dissertation. Oh well. At least I made progress somewhere.

Sigh.

Shuffling the deck

I drafted part of this post back on January 4, twenty days ago! Never got around to finishing it, and then I forgot about it. I found it today and felt like resurrecting it, so here goes:

I don't talk about my job in this blog very often, but this time there's a direct connection to my dissertation.

In early January I had my bi-weekly meeting (wait, does bi-weekly mean 'once every two weeks'? Or is it twice per week? I intend to say 'once every two weeks' here) (you know, I love writing phrases in parentheses because you can add stuff anywhere and easily communicate what's really going on in your head without messing with the grammatical structure of the sentence) (aren't I clever?) with my boss. It went well. I like her for many reasons related to our jobs. Also, not only is she supportive of me finishing my dissertation in a timely manner (and is gently pushing me to do so, which is good), but she happens to be very interested in the topic. She allows me to sort of ramble about it once in a while, and her objective, logical point of view, combined with just plain having more experience working at a college than I do, provides me with a good amount of feedback. And none of it is personal; just entirely objective. Two advantages to these conversations: first, I gain a great deal of good feedback from a trusted colleague. Second, she knows I am indeed making progress on the dissertation, which is a good thing for my supportive supervisor to know.

Through her feedback and that of a few trusted others here and there, I'm beginning to share bits and pieces of data and am finally starting to develop a theory out of all of this. I need to continue onward and keep plowing through the grainy details, but now I'm getting excited about what I'm finding and how I'm able to formulate it into something coherent, something I'll be willing to share with My Committee someday.

So, even though there is a hell of a lot of sludge in my dissertation life right now, as mentioned in my previous post, the more that I carefully share with colleauges, the more confident I'm becoming with what I'm finding in the data. Guess the sludge will melt away, perhaps with the melting away of the snow and cold weather this spring? Hope so.

Must run finish a project. Am drinking decaf tea in that I'm finding it difficult to stay warm today. Makes sense when it's only 6 degrees F!

Coming back

One can see quite easily from reading this blog that November has not been the greatest month in terms of the quantity of time spent on the dissertation. Work has really kicked my assets lately, frankly, and I've needed the evenings to relax. And you know something? I feel no guilt for relaxing!!!

Now I'm concerned about spending time on task. It's funny: since I'm fortunately a pretty quick writer, when writing the proposal I was not as concerned about the time it took to complete the task as I was concerned about finding my voice through the process and making sure I was touching on all of the various theories, studies, etc. Now, the tasks ahead of me are sort of tedious and require LOTS of time. Not certain from where the time will come. It looks like I'll take a larger-than-expected chunk of vacation time before winter break, so hopefully I'll be able to isolate myself and plow through the initial analysis then.

I hope this blog gets busier in the next few weeks...it'll mean I'm cranking out the analysis some more.

K, bye.