Family Emergence slows progress

Last weekend I was really looking forward to this weekend and at last a chance to sit down and work solidly on my thesis. That hope lasted until Tuesday and on the evening I got a phone call from my sister to say Dad had collapse while out with friends and she was at my parents' home waiting for a taxi to bring my Mum home. It was agreed she would look after Mum who has dementia that night and I would take over the next day. Whereas I am single and therefore with compassionate leave from work, my sister has a two children and a husband working both for a church and as the book keeper for her husband who is self employed.

So for the last five days my role has been a main carer for my mother. This is not made any easier by the fact that Dad is in hospital 43 miles away, and though Google says it is 48 mins I would say it is more than an hour when dealing with the real traffic. Given that my sister travels for half an hour before starting that journey and on the route calculator from my home to the hospital is the furthest of the three this is not easy. There is also a limit to the amount of compassionate leave I can take.

Unfortunately my father has unrealistic expectations of what I can do. He seems to think I can work, do my thesis and look after Mum 24/7 and also get mum to see him every day. If I  walked out mum would immediately be put in a home with no choice indeed her doctor is not really happy with me doing this as interim. My sister on the other hand has been a brick.

I have done some reading and even a bit of writing but it is hard to do much concentrated as I am working into the times when Mum does not need my immediate attention. So progress has slowed right down although I am aware that the reading will mean that I better versed that I would have been in British Congregational studies. However even that is not getting much attention. Oh the photo was taken at Dunahm Massey today when I took Mum out to take her mind off things. Unfortunately travel is a very good way of allowing her to forget. Actually it does the worse thing it can for Mum's memory which is ask her to sit quiet for a while.  Train travel at least allows her to interact with me or whoever is travelling with her. If she is active or interacting it seems to keep her memory working.

Actually if you had asked before this who would do the organising and who the hands on care for my Mum I would have guessed that it would be better the other way around but actually Mum seems to be calmer with me and my sister is a whizz at dealing with people in authority and finding out what we need to know such as exactly which ward in which hospital Dad is in.

Week 52 and 53: Slow but steady progress

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	89,204
Words typed these weeks:	2802
Words lost these weeks:	0
Total increase:	2802
Days I managed to write this fortnight:	6

Yes I know I should have reported last week and didn't. Apologies, I thought there were about two hundred words more to add that needed adding on the Monday and then I did not get around to doing it and the rest of the week took over. In fact I still have those notes to add. Progress has been slow, getting time to work on it has been difficult but I think I have crossed the mid chapter crisis successfully. Indeed Friday when I only added about a thousand words was the day when I did a lot of thinking about how I structured the chapter and made quite a few adjustments to what I had already written. This means that in some ways I have a structure for the rest of the chapter that should make filling the gap rather easy. The trick was to change the structure of what I wrote last week so that the next section seemed to reflect it and create a path to work through. I think I have managed the change from some fairly technical scientific understanding into creating a space where I can explore that understanding

This coming week which is hectic work wise I have to write another 3,000 words to get to the end of the chapter. There is quite a bit that I can draw on to create these words I just have to be careful how I treat it. I am beginning to realise that the question my supervisor set me half way through my thesis is actually answered by it, until I got to reviewing the structure of this chapter I felt I had missed it, but actually in the last section of the last chapter it will be there. So hard work but in all truth the end at least as far as the argument goes is in sight.

Week 45: Summer cold slows progress

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	75,896
Words typed this week:	1715
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	0
Days I managed to write this week:	0

This week the words have been slow, that is in some ways not surprising it has been the start of a new chapter and that is always slow and I have also had a cold. I failed to realise I had a cold when I started writing and so I was getting rather down about the amount of work I was managing to do and how limited my concentration was. In fact I am slightly further on than this but this was as far as I got last night.

This chapter is about belonging and looks at the connection between the individual and the congregation. It needs to look at this both from the perspective of the congregation and the perspective of the individual. Sociology tends to be a big to small dynamic and so I am hoping that Social Constructivism which is technically part of Social Psychology may produce a better understanding of the work the individual is doing.

The other thing is that I am beginning to realise that writing theory is very different from writing data description and I am much slower at writing theory as I need to go back and forward between the literature and the writing as I need to be careful I get it right. This means that I can spend an hour or two for just 200 words because most of the time is spent reading and writing. The good news is that since my supervision mid week I know what I was missing from my theory section that was making it so short, I was forgetting to show how others had used the theorist I was using. I will need to put that in but it does mean with this chapter that I am putting that in right from the start.

I have a second go at theory this week, needing to put together something on the "work" an individual does to maintain an identity of a group and then something on power between the individual and the group. I also would like to get registered this week with the University of Birmingham, they still have not got me sorted.