800 words out of a thousand and half the topic not written

Its been one of those frustrating weekends thesis wise.  The task in hand is to write a thousand words on Believing and Belonging and situate my thesis against that debate. Problem one, is that while I have something to say about Belonging I have very little to say about Believing in my thesis. Problem two there is a vast and complex literature which is bigger than the papers in the topic in my discipline indicate. Problem three my thesis is primarily about the third b and that is behaving. Belonging just happens to connect with their behaviour and the topic. What is more that is an ethnographic finding.

Well due to the amount of literature I have spent quite a bit of the weekend going through and back through. Firstly I have to set up why this is relevant to my PhD, which I have done. Then I have to take each of the two concepts Belief and Belonging and discuss them as concepts. The big problem is that I would like to say "Belief" is simple and then consign it to a few lines in my thesis. However, it isn't  and I think my thesis may just have as part of the conclusion some reflection on the absence of belief statements from the context of the ethnography.

I am also beginning to puzzle out the way first person pronouns are used to signal group identity. The use of the "we" pronoun seems to signal a sphere where orthopraxy is expected by the congregation whereas "I" is used when it is acceptable for changes to occur due to the surrounding culture. The problem is that this implies that "you and me Jesus" lyrics are no longer about emotion, but rather a way of signalling wider cultural norms can be brought into the choice of music. This is interesting.

The other thing I am doing now is writing so I have enough to accurately recall the citation within the text. This will expand the literature review quite substantially and I think satisfy my examiners on that score. The interesting thing is that it might also explain why I felt so at a loss at how to engage from my thesis. Unfortunately, this also means I do close reading.  Most writers and readers are not used to this. I have already struck one significant oddity which  I have demonstrated to be odd. If you have two dimension one called "belief" and the other "belonging", then there are problems if "orthodoxy" gets into the belonging one!

Anyway I did not get as much written as I hoped and would at least like to have most on Belief written and have a rough idea where the concept of belonging is going. That means I think that I am going to claim one of my few thesis days tomorrow afternoon from work and see if I can get further on.

Collating and Back to the Introduction

Books relating to Foucault

This weekend I have traced and proofed all my appendices.  I ended up with six appendices including a Bibliography. I have drafted and abstract which is 100 words too long (50%), so I am going to have to cut that down quite drastically and the big challenge is not to say succinctly what the study was but to say succinctly what the findings are. Then I have pulled the whole thesis together! This took up most of Friday.

So yesterday(Saturday) I pulled the whole thing together and did a lot of the formatting work. I now have a table of contents and also list of illustrations. I have called them illustrations but basically anything that is not pure text. So there is a table, several diagrams, a couple of photos and at least one drawing. I could find eleven in total.  What this means, is that I can finally do an exact count of the number of words in the text; 76,863 to be precise. This means that I have approximately 3,000 words to play with, maybe slightly more. The question is what are my priorities for these words. There are two, the first is to extend the section on Foucault in my introduction, not hugely but so that it actually makes an argument rather than just states the case. This has set me back to reading Foucault today. The second is to develop my conclusion.

There are however several other tidying-ups that need to  be done. One is highly related with the first, and that is to check through all the references to Foucault in my thesis and make sure they are consistently referencing the appropriate texts. The second is to find all the references to "I" and check they are appropriate and if not to remove them. I have removed some of them as I have been proof editing, but I am quite sure that some have got in. It is fine to write "I did X"; it is not fine to write "I think the second option". The first is a statement of what I did, the second is a hedging of bets. Then there is the Bibliography that needs to be sorted through and making sure it is coherent and correct. Plus putting in all the originally published information. Fortunately I have a six day weekend made up from annual leave next weekend. 

Sabbactical

This plant is growing at the top of a wall not too far away from here. The wall is about five feet tall! I am not sure where it is getting its nourishment from but it is there. Writing my thesis was beginning to feel like this plant. This blog has been more scanty of recent week. One reason for this is actually I have not been making the progress as I was before. There was very good reason for this, I was not getting the time.

Now I have cut back drastically on a lot of things in life in order to make time for thesis. I have not been going out to events, I have not seen my parents for months and I have not planned a holiday. It simply was not enough.

There are three big commitments in my life at present and in order of priority for attention these are thesis, work and church. I should explain I work 80% in a job that could easily be 100% and if I am ill the work still needs doing and the only one who can do that work is me. When I started my PhD the job actually did fit into four days a week, however two to three years ago that changed. I am working flat out and not keeping all the balls in the air. On Monday I have to go into work and explain why I have taken a nine month break from a project. Simply no time gov honest!

So with thesis not going as quickly as I liked and work being demanding, I found that the expectation that I would be getting more and more involved in church a difficult situation to negotiate. It would work like this, something quite small would be asked of me but then as I explored the ramifications the job would get bigger and bigger. Some of this was deliberate hiding of implications, some of this was my personality. If I am involved in doing something I like to see it done well. Actually it felt to me at times as if people were either plotting to find ways to get me more involved or were using me as a default person to ask to do things.

With my job I edit my thesis at weekends, I find that I can read during the week but I do not have the concentration to do editing. Editing is not easy and involves holding lots of strands together and not dropping any. If you think writing a PhD is just writing three masters thesis then you have got the wrong end of the stick. Not only do you have the practical work of three theses, you also have to integrate them together and find something new to say that runs through all three.

I suspect there is actually no shortage of new ideas in my thesis but it has felt at times as if I was trying to corral at least semi-wild horses. The result is that at this stage of my thesis I need coherent times. I can not just switch onto thesis for a hour or two in an evening and do worthwhile work. If I attend worship on a Sunday that really means sitting down at around 4pm to my thesis if at all, days like today when I was table elder take me longer to settle after church. Basically a day lost and when I have only 2.5 days anyway a day is heck of a lot to loose and to loose that regularly (one for five out of the last six is adding up and the sixth was taken with work). If you wonder why 2.5 then half a day goes with shopping and doing household chores.

Basically I got to the point where the time I had for my thesis was not allowing me to make progress.  Something had to give and the only thing that I could give that would allow the time was church. I was clearly not managing me involvement with church in a way that would enable me to finish my thesis. Seeming as the trying to keep a low level involvement going failed. I could not keep the commitment level low enough. The only other option is to opt out completely. There were people who helped me manage my commitment well, there were people who did not. Some of my keeping going so long was the loyalty to the people who were good at not pushing boundaries.

This was actually decided almost two weeks ago, but there was a communion service and only two active elders available for it, apart from me. To do communion in the style my congregation likes we need eight. Therefore dropping out at short notice seemed unfair especially as I was Table Elder 1. If you want that So I have basically just had communion to do. Today was communion and now I should not be back at church until after my thesis has been submitted, so in November.

That said I have been working on it. The big problem is that to write the introduction I am having to trace books and many are not available directly from Amazon, nor would they be in the University Library as they are far too specialist for that. So it would either be inter-library loans or me purchasing them from other dealers. That means I am writing in the expectation of having to include other work. This is tricky. So for the moment I am going to concentrate on writing a conclusion instead and hope that I can write it pretty quickly.

Hopefully next weekend I will get the 2.5 days and be able to make some good progress.

Slower Progress but still progress

Snowdrops and Crocuses at my parents last week

Sorry not to write last weekend, I did intend writing but I just did not manage to find the energy when I got back from my parents on Sunday. It was a week when I concentrated on reading. Indeed for the first time since before starting the thesis I sat down with a book, "Religion since 1945: Believing but Without Belonging" by Grace Davies, and managed to digest most of it in one sitting. I should explain as a teenager I read everything including the noticeboards at school so many times I knew the notices by heart. This high level of reading hid a underlying difficulty although several people were aware that I sometimes wrote badly for my obvious depth of reading. In the early years of this century I developed depression. This severely hampered my ability to concentrate. The difficulty that was underlying now meant I found reading for long spells difficult. I developed techniques for dealing. I found I could often make a very careful reading go a long way. I would therefore spot things others would gloss over.

I was already well on the road to recovery when I started my thesis and I have read widely, if perhaps not as much as I would have liked. The difference last week was that I could do it without getting too distracted and even enjoyed it. I do suspect that Grace Davies' book was relatively straight forward but at the same time I enjoyed it.

However what did not happen last weekend was me clearing my head with a walk. I visited my parents, Saturday evening to Sunday evening and we planned to go walking on the Sunday at Lyme Park. The weather was dry but it was COLD and there was a biting wind so we called it off and went for a coffee and cake at their shop.

However after last weeks decent progress this week has been slowly. Some of this is my fault, I started a migraine on Monday, I know this looking back though I was in work, Tuesday it declared itself, however there was teaching in work on Wednesday so as it was "reduced" and I hoped going I went in. Then Thursday about four O'Clock I realised that I still had no concentration at all and things were breaking up again. In other words by going in on Wednesday I had simply allowed it to hang around. So I took Friday off to try and recover. It finally worked but it took a good while on Saturday for me to do the reformulation of the chapter I was suppose to do during the week. I did it and wrote one section on Saturday with reshaping a second.

Today was Annual Church Meeting at my home church. I have not been a serving Elder for most of the time I was doing my PhD but I either had to stand for re-election today or this time next year. My congregation is also going into vacancy. I decided that a three month or so overlap was doable, not least because I am also Table Elder One this year and that makes going to Elders meetings pretty essential. The problem was persuading the congregation they had to vote for this. Elders should be re-elected every five years. I served three to four years and then took a sabbatical for a couple of years when the depression was at it worst. I then came back and did about another three years but because I had been on sabbatical I was not re-elected. I think congregation had decided my thesis was another sabbatical and not that I had finished serving my time and therefore was not standing for re-election. After that I finished the second section of the redraft of the belonging chapter.

Belonging Chapter in Second Draft

Glasses and a reading book

Well I have sent another chapter to my supervisor. Yes I know it is just over a week to do this but I have had a lovely long thesis spell this weekend. So I had to shop of Friday but I had Friday afternoon, all of Saturday and Sunday plus this afternoon. The chapter was also the most complete of the chapters when I went through first draft so I did not have huge amounts of stuff to change, that said I found I was doing more than I would have liked. The need was basically to clarify the chapter but to do that I had to do a lot of work on putting things in the right place.

What is equally true is that I analyse through writing. That is it is when I get to dealing with detailed description that oddly my brain seems to start working analytically with the topic. For instance I noticed in writing about belonging that the real time when there were arguments were not actually when there were problems with the outside world but when there was conflicts between strands of the congregations own identity. This in turn goes back to the coupling/binaries that I have seen in the Reformed tradition. These of course are where there are arguments that are contained within the tradition and therefore are not easily settled. The within nature of these things is what makes for the intractability. What you tend to get is a swinging motions which seems to continue for far longer than you'd expect. Then there are constellation, when certain themes in the identity start to come together. When this happens a congregation is likely to move quite strongly in that direction.

I think I am going to start an editor note book with things that I need to go through and check I have built right into my thesis. otherwise I am going to neglect important information.

Oh and why the specs. Well today was also a thesis day, but this morning I had to be out of the home, so I took my courage in my hands and went and got my eyes tested. I am getting older and now need varifocals. Something I have recognised for a year or two but have been putting off as long as possible. It should make reading and working easier. So I sort of feel that is was thesis or rather I will get the time back for thesis. I then went to a cafe and read a book related to thesis (well one of the most recent publications in the area). Then back this afternoon and preparing for a conference tomorrow and the day after. So I printed out the next chapter for re-drafting and hope I get chance to read it this week.

Week 46: Small count hides quite a bit of work

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	76,268
Words typed this week:	372
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	372
Days I managed to write this week:	1

There are exactly four more green bits of tissue paper on the triskele this week. The increase is quite small this week and I know I should be writing more but it has been a real struggle to get this far. That said I did read a whole book yesterday and I spent quite a bit of time during the week actually working on something else in the tradition chapter plus there has been a lot of organising bits and pieces I need to do so that I can keep working while I am on holiday.

One of the reasons it is so slow is that I am having to put together the theory as I go, this is stuff I know but that I have not spent time reading around and I need it now because I have to give another angle to my argument about belonging. This is taking me to theorists who are normally used in subjects like social psychology, conversational analysis and so on. These are very different theorists to the big social theorists that I have spent most of my time with and yet to portray belonging we need to look at these.  That means this week I really need to get my head around social constructionism and the difference between English and American Schools of this. I suspect I will go with the English who are not so optimistic about the role an individual can play in creating reality.

It should also be noted that I had a cold during the week and was definitely below par.

Week 37: Catchup week which means heavy writing

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	61,136
Words typed this week:	3579
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	3579
Days I managed to write this week:	4

This week has been catch-up week.  Last week I did not get a word written but I did do a lot of careful qualitative analysis. That can really only be written at the computer and I also needed to finish the detailed work. Well I did this week. It was not as interesting as I thought, but it gave me some results and I am on firmer ground. Something I guessed at in earlier writing has come to be on firmer ground. However this week I was writing properly again, well descriptive writing and I found that once I was not on the stuff that needs careful analysis my brain flows as it always has done. However the week was heavy and ended up bribing myself to finish the formal writing last night so as to have today fairly clear. 

I also saw my minister this week for a long chat, most of it irrelevant to thesis but am realising that the answer to putting in the theory into the description may be at least in draft form be done in the form of side notes like post it notes. Then I can work in more and more depth until it comes clear what is going on. This was her suggestion.

This week I have to write about services that are not the main worship service. There are two sorts the occasional, such as the Christmas Carol Service and the regular, in both congregations these were evening services which had a very different feel to the main morning ones.  So this week I better be reading my supervisors book. Well there is him and one or two Roman Catholic specialists and Roman Catholic sociologist of Religion are very different from Protestant ones. Where we see diversity and confusion they see unity and order. It really is quite interesting how a traditions culture affects those who study it, even in traditions which are not essentially part of the culture.

The thing is to find the connections that spin out from worship to wider sociological concerns. When I have them then I can write the theory section with relative ease.

Week 27: Slower progress due to getting distracted finding a quote

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	48,412
Words typed this week:	2164
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	2164
Days I managed to write this week:	4

This week the increase has been slower. This was in part due to me being sidetracked yesterday. In last weeks writing I recalled a quote from Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein, there was only one problem, I thought I no longer had a copy. So I ordered a full copy. I then found I still had a friends copy on my shelf, (sorry Sue sometime I really must get around to returning it to you, it is in far too good a condition to be mine). The old copy which is the same as edition of the one I owned twenty years ago had only one abbreviated appendix. Yesterday before I started writing in this weeks I decided to see if I could find the quote. This was going to be interesting as I have not looked at Lord of the Rings in any edition for fifteen years. Now my assumption was that it would have come from the edition I owned so I ignored the appendices. However after several hours absorbed in trying to find it by cross checking against the index (I found I was reading far more than was strictly necessary) I decided I had to try another approach. So I went on the internet. That was not easy but eventually on an obscure site found the actual quote. My assumption about it being in my old copy was wrong. It was in an appendix my old copy clearly had not had. That means I must have noted it while briefly reading in a friends copy some twenty years ago. It is strange how my brain works! Something must have struck me about that quote even then. Having traced it, I decided that as it was a mood quote I should use a different one from Lord of the Rings instead.

Also this week a friend sent through notice of conference on Exploring Spirituality in the Reformed Tradition  which will give me chance to talk to think about that section of the thesis with others just before I start it. I should be tidying up the chapter on community and starting the one on Worship before I try and write the chapter on Reformed Piety. The problem is that we use "Spirituality" and I am really not sure it should not be "Spiritualities" given the diversity is inherent within the tradition.

So yesterday I ended up very short of time for writing which meant I only got in about five hundred words, so I have had to make up for that today. I actually had plenty to write as I had the ideas for the rest of the section I am working on, which is on what the congregations understand as being "welcoming" and "friendly". It is intriguing that both congregations have understandings that suit their approach to being church and what they understand as important. I think that many other people have an idea of "welcoming" and "friendly" means, and that if any church is going to actually look at something with "Welcome" in the title then it needs to look at what it means by that and what others mean like that.

So tomorrow I am hoping to get some serious reading done (although I need to tidy the house and get some money out as well) then the rest of the week I need to finish drafting the section on Welcome and start on the theory section for the beginning. I think I will tackle anxiety first, rather than boundaries.

Week 9 - Writing around a conference

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far: 19,823
Words typed this week: 1894
Words lost this week: 0
Total increase: 1986
Days I managed to write this week: 3

Well as you can read about in my previous blog post I have had a conference this week. I travelled up Sunday and came back Tuesday evening. Actually due to timings of the conference I managed a half hour writing on one of the mornings but not on the second. The other thing is that I lost the second day, which was yesterday due to migraine. I suppose I could have done it today, but I did not. The net result of trying to do this is that I have been a lot less focussed than other weeks and my writing felt woolly at the start of today. I simply did not have the engagement with the methodological texts I have had previous weeks.  I think I have got it back on track, indeed I think some of the

Therefore I am going to try and write another 1000 words this coming week, there are several incentives for doing this. Firstly those 1000 will mean I have an amount that is about quarter of my thesis written. Secondly it means I have a sort of draft for my methodology. It isn't complete, there is something about analytic methods to go into the there, but as I have not even started started the second immersion I don't feel like I can write about it yet.

Now I must really do some file housekeeping and download the proof read section I need to final edit and get two other shorter sections off to my proof readers.

Second week: pace somewhat slower but another section written

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far: 5,761
Words typed this week: 2,226
Days I managed to write this week: 3

I am still managing to write over 2,000 words a week, admittedly these are the easy words which is probably why I managed it in three days, actually I am hoping to do a fourth day tomorrow before my parents come but as they are over I knew I could not type them up then so I had to do it today, so it may well show as five days next week (only I have equal time problems next week).

The thing is that this really only covers part of the process. This week as well as writing these words I have also been preparing for a supervision, which has meant sending last weeks words off to proof readers and editing them plus making sure I have all the references in. I am supposed to do that when I type the words in, but I don't always, for a variety of reasons. For instance this week I still have a couple of references to put, these are to books that I have at work and are only peripherally of interest to my thesis but are useful for establishing a point. So I will have to find the references at work.

The other thing is I have actually managed to do some background reading as separate from the reading for the chapter I am actually writing. Some of it was just general methodology stuff, although Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday life is probably more than that, he is probably one of the people sitting around the table of my thoughts and I will need to explore him more when I get to writing my introduction, although I must admit present reading is methodological. I also finished one theory of Religion book and started another one on Reformed Spirituality. My reading is nothing if not eclectic.


Next week includes as supervision plus I am at a conference for work on Friday so is again busy, plus I suspect I will have finished this very easy part and will be having to write something more tricky by the end of the week. So lets see how I do.