The yayness factor has re-entered my life again.
Let's conduct a detailed analysis of what that means exactly.
Since I like FPS (First Person Shooter) games, I chose bullet points as a method for structuring my post. (For the record: I'm a pacifist, but I like to shoot and kill pixely effigies of various kinds of animate beings.)
Yayness is a notoriously challenging concept to break down into distinct ingredients, hence the need for great care and caution when formulating the statements. In plain terms, this entails vigorous soulsearching.
- I finished relinking the pictures. My blog looks pretty again. Sort of.
- The sun started to shine yesterday. I can't get enough of it. The winter will be long and dark enough.
- I came up with a new topic for research.
- My feet aren't sore anymore. I can go back to jogging almost everyday.
- It's only 4 weeks to my conference presentation and I finally got round to writing a draft.
- I have several writing projects, which is infinitely better than just sitting down and reading books and panicking about not being able to focus for five minutes.
Each of these points merits elaboration. Well, not the first one. Nor the second. Let's take point number three first under the microscope.
(a) I try very hard not to get too excited about my new idea for research, because I don't have much extra time at the moment (except for blogging, there's always time for blogging!).
Long story short, I'm not entirely happy with expanding the topic of my thesis into a dissertation. One reason is that it doesn't seem important enough as a (set of) research question(s). Another is that I feel as though it lacks challenge.
It was definitely a challenge when I first started working on it. The literature was full of studies on it, yet no one had anything particularly enlightening to say about it. By the time I finished my thesis, after tremendous amounts of working hours, I felt like there wasn't much more to say.
After 120 pages, claiming that you've only scratched the surface seems overkill. I plan to write an article or two on some particular issues related to it, because my results deserve to be published. But overall as a topic, it looks like a dead end.
As for my new idea, once I'd thought about it, I started wondering why I didn't think of it before. It's a topic I stumbled upon two years ago when doing background reading for my thesis. I never quite realized what a great topic it would make.
Now that I've been pondering on it, the possibilities and the breadth of what I could do is simply mindboggling. Finally a topic grandiose enough (to grammar geeks at least), and challenging enough for driving me up the wall. I don't see a point in researching something unless it's a challenge; something that seems impossible to make sense of at first sight.
The rest of the ingredients of my newly found state of yayness don't need that much explaining.
(b) I could really use new trainers.
(c) I've been avoiding the thought that I have to give a full 30-minute presentation in ICEHL in Münich in about a month. I go through these periods when I'm extremely antisocial and I hate the thought of any kind of social interaction. But the key in getting excited again about the presentation was to remind myself why my topic is so interesting, to me at least. If I focus on how interesting my message is, I don't even mind the fact that I'm in front of an audience.
I looked at the time table, and noticed that there are not only many many Finns, but also two more people from my university: my professor, and another senior colleague. I've never met him. We come from the same university, and I finally get to meet him - in Germany.
(d) Last but not least, I'm happy to have found some time finally for writing. For quite some time now I've preferred writing to reading.
I feel like I've partially lost my ability to focus on reading. It's not as bad as it was in the past, but it's still difficult for me. It's strange. I can literally stare at one sentence for 30 minutes, then move onto the next one. It's not convenient when you're trying to read several books for a test. I can manage, though - it just takes me months to read two or three books, that's all.
But writing I find very easy to focus on. Being able to arrange your thoughts in the process is a definite plus. More and more, I'm falling in love with writing for a blog. Even though I barely have any regular readers, it's therapeutic and exciting and useful for developing my writing skills.
In the name of preserving the sanity of my dear reader(s), I promise I'll keep it short(er) in the future. What's more, one of these days I shall post a new painting as well
No comments:
Post a Comment