Almost stopping for Christmas

Parcels for posting and Christmas reading

Well I did not write last night but then I finally got my tradition chapter of my thesis sent off to my supervisor close on midnight. Now I am not expecting him to read it until probably late January at the earliest, maybe February. However, I wanted to get it out of my in tray so that when I get back from Christmas I can have a good go at getting the flows chapter into final form.

Even with finishing so late it took a lot of effort to get there. I started using Pomodoro technique on Saturday to increase my production rate as Christmas and remains of cold had hit it the previous weekend. I also wanted to go to a party on Saturday night. A friend M holds a fantastic Christmas party every year. It includes elements of young person's birthday party as her son's birthday is around then, get together of families to share a meal (chilli made in huge quantities and served with rice) and Bohemian drinks party. Finishing with an intimate group of friends who sit around the table and chat sociably until the small hours of the morning. It is very inclusive and very relaxed. The late night sociability with friends is something I have rarely done since I came to Sheffield twenty years ago and felt good.

So I started, and I got to the stage where there was just one section that needed working on. So I went to the party, stayed later than intended. My decision was to sleep out and then get on as best I could. So I was rather surprised to get up after five hours sleep and find myself ready to work on my thesis.

However, yesterday was a long haul. It took me to lunch time to finish the section, and then I had to check the Grammar and do the bibliography. I have not found a good way to move references between Scrivener and Word. So what I do is to put in Scrivener enough detail (normally authors surname and date plus page) to hopefully find reference in  Mendeley and then when I switch to Word I go through and check it all through very thoroughly and put in the references.

This was hard going for the chapter on tradition as there are at least twice as many references as their are for any other chapter. This is because the autoethnography has been done by me interacting with the texts from and on the tradition. Actually this chapter is still very clearly work in progress. If I get to getting it published it will definitely be one chapter that needs a lot of work. Actually it will need to break into at least two chapters just to deal with the stuff that is in their. Did you know Calvinist/Puritans/Reformed used to view science as a spiritual discipline and an act of devotion to God? Just one of the odd facts I pulled up yesterday while reading up on Dissenting Academies. They taught science because that is how they understood it, not because of commercial applications. If you wanted a commercial education there were plenty of other schools offering that, and they were cheaper too.

Oh I also have cheated, I tend to use Wikipedia not as a source of information but as a place to say "this is not just me".  That is things I know, but I can not document where I know them from. My father was employed there, and while he was there I picked up in general conversation this fact, really is not reference. My supervisor does not like Wikipedia in academic work, so he suggested I took a reference from Wikipedia. Well yesterday I found myself with no other alternative to Wikipedia but to take it reference, fortunately to a source which I a pretty sure does actually give the information given.

I have a big question, why has the Reformed tradition lost confidence in its spirituality. The more I read both historical books in the tradition and also accounts of the tradition it seems that we had what many would say was a well developed spiritual industry about a century and a half ago. Since then we have been persuaded that we do not have one! It is rubbish, when people put the Reformed tradition down for being "anti" then I nearly always can be sure that far from being anti, we have been particularly pro.

Anyway largely stopping for the next few days as Christmas is upon me. I have parcels to post, family to visit and other things to be doing. I will be back writing next weekend so I am taking a couple of books hoping that if I read some of them this week then I will save time afterwards.