i have spent the past 10 days of the year in Greece, visiting family and exploring the processes that take place inside in terms of home, culture, belonging and so on, for one more time, from the stage and phase that i am right now…I am contemplating on the year that just ended, so many experiences, so many challenges, learnings and so on. I welcome the New Year that just arrived… My wish now is that i complete this PhD research withing 2009, soulfuly and sucessfuly…greetings to all!

After about 6 weeks of hard work focusing on chapter writing, i managed to produce a coherent methodology chapter for my PhD thesis which i emailed last night to my supervisor and we had a meeting today about it. I received very positive feedback, him commenting that my writing is ‘tour de force’ and attracts the interest of the reader, it is having an impact. We talked about the structure of the Thesis and where i could place what, something that will get clearer as i do more writing. We also discussed some things that i feel confused about and how i position myself towards certain dilemmas. i think what i have to keep doing at this point is just keep writing and possibly all the processing and decisions to be made will become clearer as I proceed. My goal now is to produce another two chapters within certain deadlines we have set: 1. first, i will write a chapter about my ‘own story’ by the end of January, which shall possibly go before the methodology and after the Introduction because it introdices me and gives the context of my reflexivity to the reader. Then 2. i will attempt to do the analysis and write the findings chapter by end of April. This is going to be a bit hard cause i see that there is much more to be done with data analysis before i can do the writing but i will give it a try anyway…time to take a ‘breath’ now and continue with the rest of the journey, it is ongoing now and for the next months and requires my discipline and dedication

It is Sunday and i have been sitting on my desk since early afternoon, continuing with writing a first draft of the methodology chapter. I am feeling quite stressed, as the more i write, the more i realise the size and blur areas of the research or what is still in process in my understandings. There is no other way forward than to ‘keep writing’ like one would just ‘ keep swimming’ if in the middle of the ocean, until the next rock or piece of land becomes visible…i see that from now on i have to work in more dedicated mode, with less holidays and less free time…the weekend is no ‘free’ period when doing a PhD, unless one is very well organised and with strict time or mood management. I find it impossible to discipline myself in such a way as i notice that for this piece of work, i need to be following the moods of inspiration and inner flow that are not that predictable. I have the discipline of sitting on my desk and reading and so on but the writing flow comes at its own mood and timing, and i am doing my best to be ‘attuned’ with that and stay creative. The blog writing is ‘on hold’ as my priority is the Thesis writing. so, the blog has a different function for now, helping me as an archive and reminder of the PhD process, my personal library that i use now to find useful quotes and extracts for my Thesis

 The metaphors of travel, journey, home and return or not are at the core of my project and i find creative ways of associating with the meanings, here is another poem to record, where Tennyson gets inspired by my deal Greek Odysseus (Ulysses for the Romans, never mind!)

Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink … Read more »

During our monthly supervision session today, i shared a poem with the group that i wrote as i am drafting my methodology chapter. I feel that i do not want to disclose it here in public as my supervisor advised me to actually it unclude it in my thesis as an expression of the ‘heuristic illunimation’ phase that seems to be happening and is giving me insights in the forms of metaphor and more creative forms of writing, i.e poetry. I read the poem in front of the Phd group and this generated a fruitful discussion where i expored further how all this images and metaphors that come to my head are related to my PhD topic and the researh process…othe members of the PhD group made their own connections too. I notice that the more i am focusing on producing Phd text, the less am writing in this blog , which is what works for me now and it matches my prioritising. More will come as and when necessary, any comments from readers are still welcome!