St Andrew's Day End to Acwrimo, but not finished

Well I am writing to the line as today is the Acwrimo. I technically have failed to get through what I set myself to do. I wanted this chapter finished and I did not get there. It will take me the next two weekends to get to the stage when I can send it to my supervisor. This was the original plan before AcWriMo  but I was hopeful as I have useful ways to spend the extra two weeks. I have however finished expanding the section on Congregational Studies and am largely happy with it. Indeed it has become a lot stronger and more interesting. All I really need to do is think whether I need to give one of the questions of my thesis around what role worship plays within the identity.

In some sense the easiest bit is the bit I have left to last. So I hope that next weekend  I can expand the literature review on the theorising of identity so that it looks and feels more like a traditional literature review. In some parts that is the easiest point as it is the stuff that I have revised most often in the process of putting this thesis together. Ironically it is also the most wide ranging of reviews.

Time wise however next week is time poor with respect to thesis. This week for work I am at a focus group in London.  It is a once in six month meeting and it just happens to be next week. It is in London because it is winter, and coming further North in the UK is fine for Southerners when there is a chance of decent weather but not when it gets dark early in the evening. So all us Northerners (some  have to travel over twice the distance I do) have to head down to balmy London. I wonder if the Scots fly down to these events. Then next weekend my nephew is coming to stay for a weeks work experience. So I need to fit working around him as well.

Anyway there are some good aspects to having had a go at Acwrimo as well.

1. It got me writing again and I am enjoying the writing far more this time. I have not got the space in my timetable this revision I had when doing the original writing, but  I do find that writing expands to fill the time I allow it.
2. I learnt again that I need to have music on when I am writing but not Ravi Shankar. I automatically get up and do something different every time he comes on my play list. I guess I better remove him from it before next weekend.
3. Jogging is good for writing. Now I am slightly jogging phobic. This dates back to my late teens when I tried to get into jogging just before I became ill. The result was I associate jogging with being ill. However, as part of my getting fitter, I need to be road fit as well as generally fit. That means I actually need to be either walking or running on tarmac surfaces for quite a distance. Well walking for miles just does not fit into my timetable most of the time. So I gave in and am trying jogging. The surprise is that I have a better writing day if I jog first thing in the morning. It seems to get the antsy mood out of me and I settle quicker into writing.

So yes I have not completed what I set myself to but I am pleased with what has been achieved.

Slowly getting my focus back

This will be short but I have spent most of the weekend sorting out what needed to be done next and beginning to do it. I had been slowly loosing the focus over the weeks before as other demands encroached on my time. I am not clear next, this week has an elders and there is a communion next Sunday.

I have also been very tired this weekend, more than I have been recently. This may be good news as I had not been sleeping too well for the last couple of weeks due to the stress I felt under. This may mean that I have started to sense an easing in it. However I need more time on my thesis and I am finding it hard to find it. Every one is very ready for me to take time in theory but in practice the reality is different. I can take study days at work but I have to be able to complete my work and there is no let up in that.

So this weekend I was basically getting my head around the edits that needed doing to my introduction. They are interesting, not on the whole huge things but quite often requiring some reading and thinking about. I must admit I cut out one comment as it was just not worth the effort I would need to do to justify it. I thought when I put it in that it was accepted knowledge. After all most congregations I have ever been in a lot of the lay leadership has been in their sixties and seventies. It is a rare congregation where it is spread more widely although thinking on it Christ Church Parrswood did have quite a few who were younger though church secretary was Bernard and he was in his sixties. The church treasurer was two people in my time, one in his eighties  and one in his forties. I also know I am not alone in this knowledge, Rev Mike Jackson of Park URC Reading also commented on it when I was there. However there is no literature out there that says this is the case.

Anyway I have got the introduction to the introduction written, in the end I took the very straight forward approach of telling my examiners what this thesis was about. I have also done quite a bit on the vision process. Some tidying of the last section. So this week I really need to read enough of a couple more Congregational Studies books to make a complete literature review. I am trying to trace any thesis (masters or doctoral) that has been done within British Reformed or Non-Conformist Churches that is a study of congregation(s) and uses ethnographic method. So far I have found a geographer at Edinburgh University who has done some research on Free Church of Scotland that is Ethnographic (actually I may need to reference that work in a later chapter as well). I also have found a Presbyterian Lecturer in New Zealand who puts his interest as Congregational Studies and knows enough as to list the URC. The major problem is finding a forgotten thesis.