This state of flux is nothing else than normal life: fluidity of possibilities. And yet, in the modern world in which we live we want to “see” things before starting them, we need to control them, be efficient. There is very little efficiency in research. Organisation can help, but luck and sudden grace have a big chunk too. No one admits this. It is in the “in between” that things happen, because connections suddenly are created. We cannot plan for creation, we need to let it happen. Although I always struggle with time in my life, and the idea of spending a day at the BL without any certainties that I will find the quote that I need infuriates me, I have to admit that the PhD will have taught me something: more than patience what counts is to have faith in the becoming… To let go of efficiency is to let go of control and embrace “affected experience”. Why have we not been taught to see life as a constantly changing dynamic experience? If our success criterias had nothing to do with the time it took us to get there but with the qualitative feeling of growth we would be less stressed and,maybe, more aware and “alive”.

After slow time, slow food and slow internet I suspect I am embracing “slow becoming” as my new mantra!

What have I learned from the day?

First: that there is nothing better for energy boosting than discussing a topic that matters to you with people that fully understand what you are saying.

Second: that students often know more than us – but that I knew already!

Third: that it is a good, and useful, lesson of humility than to be reviewed by your own students.

Fourth: that I actually know what I am writing about (sometimes I doubt it, but seeing that it makes sense to others has comforted me on this one)

Fifth: that it makes sense to take a participative approach before starting my last chapter on “partecipative i-docs”…

And finally… lots of little things that are too complex to explain here but that I should start changing very soon!!!

Back to work then, and this time with lots of energy! Thanks, dear students!!!

The price to pay is the coming back. I should be excited about all the things I have to do but they look alien to me at the moment… I am in a no-zone, like if I was detached from everything. Going from 35 degrees to 15 also means I have a terrible cold. So I am back and sick. Feels terrible….

I am sure that in a week or so I will be back in the rhythm of things. Once I am in the water I know how to swim… but I hate cold water… so I am wondering what I am doing in London! What I have learned during those holidays is how one can re-invent herself all the time. I love what I do… and yet, I could do something completely different. I suppose I love a lot of things… I’ll keep this as a positive note and try to feel lucky about the world of possibilities that are around me. Everything is in the glance… half full, half empty… I am lucky my daughter wakes up with a smile every morning… it fills my day…

Bizarrely, dealing with day to day life (managing the household, making sure the family eats balanced food, bringing kids to activities and parties etc…) are the things that take most of my time. And even more bizarrely I do not count them as “work”!!! The house/family stuff just has to be done, but it does not count… how can this be? There must be something very wrong with  the accountability of working time in my head… or is it a “cultural” problem? Now that I think of it I had  a working mother that was facing exactly the same dilemma: her day was starting when everybody had finished theirs… and I can remember her frustration when my father was reading the paper while she was cleaning up the table!!! Oh yes… I can remember!

Although I hope that times have moved on – and I am certainly freer than my mother was – I can notice that I have the same default position: house work has to be done, but it does not count. The problem of this position is that, since the hours of the day are limited, one is constantly in the position of “being late” or “not having done enough”. Hence frustration.

In my adult life I purposefully chose to be a mum “available to her kids”  (contrary to  mine that was constantly running). But I also chose to escape the “frustration trap”. Contradiction in terms? Very possible….

And yet, if I want to put my mantras into practice, I will have to face my coming month of holidays with the ecstatic joy of the lucky mother/woman that I am, and get rid as soon as possible of the stupid guilt – “unachieved PhD”, “unfinished book-shelves in the kids bedrooms”, and “unfinished i-docs website”. There you go: it is not that I have not managed to achieve what I wanted to do before leaving – this would guide me into the famous guilt trap – no… it is just that life is too short and that I am too committed to enjoy it! There you go, this feels much better already….

Carpe diem.

Anyway… apparently I need to add another case study… oh well, it will have to wait for September then.

It seems now clear to me that completing a PhD is not only a question of research, argumentation and knowledge… most of it is about endurance and patience. The ones that arrive to the end of it are the ones that managed to keep going… in spite of everything…

My problem is that I am a curious person and that I am constantly attracted by new adventures so… I would really not say that patience is my strength… Yet, this is maybe what I really have to learn out of all this!

A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process [In Less Than 60 Seconds] from chel white on Vimeo.

Now that I am back home, and therefore back to work, I try to promise myself not to act too much as a running hamster again… but is it possible? Do we, do I have any choice? It seems to me that you are either in or out.

I am sitting here watching my 250 e-mails… do I have the guts to bin them all without reading them? And even if I only select 20 important ones, they all send me to other documents and websites that I need to check and read… each of them is a window on other hamsters’ cages…

I shall try to take it easy… at least for today!

So far I am surprisingly calm. There are no real urgencies yet and I have done all I could think of: thought of the intro and closing speech, checked the guests, tried to remember most of the project that are going to be presented… can’t think of anything else to do actually. I think we have over packed the day but… too late to change that so… we will have to deal with it… learn from your own mistakes…

The fact that we are already fully booked is such good news that I cannot believe it! One year ago, when Judith and myself thought about the idea of putting together an event totally dedicated to the interactive documentary we would never have dreamt of such worldwide interest!!! If on one hand a room full of people is a bit intimidating (I am opening the day… huuups) on the other hand it is fantastic news!

All I can do now is cross my fingers and hope that the event goes well. No power cut on the day, no devastating viral bug that eats computers… and no sudden vanishing of our guest speakers! Please, please, please… Also:  if it goes well we have very high chances to make it an annual event. YES! Would that not be great? i-Docs could also become the FESTIVAL on interactive documentaries, with time… OK… dream on, dream on…

Back to business: I have to twitt on i-Docs now… ahhhh… all this new media cross referencing!!! Can’t believe how time consuming all this stuff is…

Let’s hope now that such “buzz” fills the atmosphere at i-Docs, and that I manage to stay calm without stressing too much at the event. So far, so good… let’s see in two weeks time!

Bizarrely when one hits nausea sometimes thing happen… a discussion with a friend, an indepth chat with a philosophy specialist can became illuminant… like a new horizon in a dark sea… I am now back into writing, and this time full of enthousisam and exchitement! May this mood last for a while, as I have not finished my chapter… May the sea drift me towards new directions, and the flow fill me with novelty, may justice thank the people that with a little push propulse us far beyond what we can see.

I feel bad for not having added anything to the archive for ages!!! All I have been able to do is to add a couple of Haikus (because I have fun with those) and some blogs in the main home screen… I suppose it is better than nothing… but I still feel a bit guilty of not managing to do more…

I read a mixture of books on complexity, interactivity, consciousness and Spinoza… strangely enough they were all related in one way or another… and it all seemed very clear to me when I was in the Italian Alps looking at the complexity of a cloudy sky and at the reflexive calmness of a glacier’s lake… Could it be that simple?

The good news is that now that I am back to London it is all muddy again in my mind… is this symptomatic about the fact that here I have too many jobs to fulfil or is simplicity just ephemeral  by nature?

Obviously non of this is new to critical analysis. But what is new for me is that I am now strongly aware of it. Although interviewing people made me feel secure, I was also aware of the role I was performing, of the production rules that I was embodying and re-proposing.

I hope that the interactive documentary that we want to make with this content will allow me to break out of the conventions that both tranquillize and irritate me… This is ultimately the aim of a PhD: to bring out new directions of enquiry and to push oneselves outside of the confort zone…

7.00 am, alarm clock. 7.30, get the kids ready. 7.45, breakfast. 8.00 kids to school. 8.30, I do my jogging. 9.00 shower. 9.30, cappuccino plus start writing till the kids are back from school. It is not exactly a 9 till 5 job, but nearly… I have to say that there is a nice feeling to this kind of monastic rythm. The days pass by one after the other. I have blocked this time for writing so I am not taking anything else on… suddenly the days seem easier, smooth, with no attached complications. My moods go from total frustration to total excitment. Illuminations and flat stagnation rythm my days. The fact is that I am slow. I am such a slow writer… how could I ever had decided to do a PhD? It takes me forever to decide what to write, and how to formulate it… I suppose I have to put my head down and just persevere…

So here I am: cappuccino in my hand: where next?

There is always a moment of blues in this… all is possible, but all is to be started again… it is half joy and half an effort… is is about starting motion…

Last trimester was great! I had a great time going at conferences and meeting up people. Now I know I am back into reading and writing. I also have to finish marking my students’ essays…

OK: Phd: I am back!

The thing with having kids is that they are constantly on holidays!!! Believe it or not I find it very hard to swing from holiday mood  to working mood every 6 weeks (which is on average how often the kids have a break from school). One side of me believes it is incredibly civilised to have so many breaks and to remember that there are others things in life than work, school runs and house organisation… but the other side of me finds it very painful to switch between completely different lives all the time.

I suppose that working from home does not help. When the kids are on hols they are there: right in front of me waiting for me to take the lead.  Shall we go to the park? Shall we paint? Can we have a play-date? I might be limited but I find it impossible to do my PhD work while my kids are painting in the kitchen and probably messing up all the walls of the house… call me a control freak, but I am either with them or at my desk working… I can’t do both together… The good news is that when they will grow up they will NOT want me to organise their day… but we have time for that…

So here I am: kids are back at school and I have 6 weeks in front of me to try to remember what my PhD was about. Probably by the time I will have remembered the kids will be on holiday again!

Jokes apart, I now have a collection of notes of “nice to add/change” but I have decided to take a break till September before facing them. At the moment I have kids on summer holidays and student dissertations to read so… the PhD will have to wait – this is the advantage of doing it part-time.

Still, I am going to publish the first three chapters of my PhD (the very drafted versions that I presented to my panel in June) and I hope you will want to comment on them… any input helps!! Thanks!!!

I am a bit frustrated not to work on my website at the moment, but I have no choice. The writing process is taking every single free moment that I have. I must be a very slow writer… it takes me for ever to write: I  concentrate on the precise word, on the reference, on the logical link between one sentence and the next one… Sometimes it is extremely frustrating, other times something emerges from the paper (actually, the computer screen) and it suddenly “makes sense”. My head seems to be like a huge pot that contains loads of ideas and intuitions. The praxis of writing is like a filter that orders the confusion that is in my mind. There were so many possibilities, yet one has to be chosen. Why is it so satisfying to have order?

The process of writing is for me a long layering process. Each reading reveals things to be changed and each writiting reveals new ideas, but also new incongruences… Like waves that layer rocks, the hours of writining and proof-reading smooth the nature of my discourse… and slowly, a shape emerges.

A part from the various bugs and missing links, most people seem to be commenting on the PhD Blog/Diary.

“Why are you doing this?” seems to be the most common reaction… Why exposing your moods and personal thoughts, about the process of doing a PhD, if this is not the core point of your PhD.

This is a fair point. After all I am doing a PhD in New Media and Cultural Studies – and not in psychology or ethnography…

Bizarrely enough I had not thought about this in this way. I had not thought about how I would use this section in my PhD. All I wanted to do was to create a space where both my academic self and my “rest-of-self” could co-exist. I wanted to express my conviction that a PhD is much more than what is presented to the Viva, since it is a process that involves self- search and this touches different levels of emotions. All I wanted to do was to document those levels. For me it was a matter of integrity: once I had discovered a reason of frustration, I had to address it. I did not particularly think of the consequences of my acts…

This is where feed-back has already proven to be useful. The observers observing my observations have noticed what I had not seen:

Point 1: I could hurt people. By writing in emotional states that are typical of PhD mood swings (frustration, fear, exaltation etc…) I’ll might write in an impartial or exaggerate way and hurt people. This is not what I want.

Point 2: writing about academics and  institutions could bring me enemies within my own university, which is not very helpful if I am trying to finish my PhD…

Point 3: if people start commenting back on my PhD blog I could end up being hurt myself.

Point 4: managing a blog that will not directly feel into my PhD is a waste of time that I do not need.

Point 5: blogging about moods is all very good but it is self-referential and does not help anybody.

Point 6: if I want to speak about PhD issues and emotional swings I should open it up to other PhD students and make it a platform for potential change and dialogue with the institution. This would be a positive attitude, rather than a moaning one.

Point 7: if I am researching digital interactivity a blog is just not interactive enough, I need to push it further.

Point 8: a personal diary next to a research archive is a strange mix. The diary could diminish the credibility of the archive or vice versa.

Well, well… this is a boomerang more than a feed-back!!!

I have been pondering for the last four days what to do with it… and I find it very difficult.

I do not want to step back for fear of the institution… I honestly think that a debate would be beneficial… students go through so many frustrations while doing a PhD and a lot of it has to do with a system that does not have enough founding to give the appropriate time and resources to its students. University teachers are overworked… shall we hide this evidence? Student often get lost in their journey… a few make it, a lot give it up… why not addressing this issue?

I do not want to delete my PhD Blog/diary  because it takes me time… at the moment I feel it has a space, it is a way for me to know where I am in my process. Obviously I could keep it private and not publish it on the web. This is an option, I am not ruling it out. But for now it is also a way to make a statement: it is OK to speak about the nitty gritty, the less glamorous side of things, it is OK to expose the emotional side of a PhD… actually, this is what makes it a whole…

I take on board the fact that a personal diary is maybe not the best way to achieve my aim… it is just the best I could do so far. I keep my options open; this is after all an experiment… I am happy to transform this diary into something else when I will find the right platform or the right idea.  For now I am searching… and if I see in a few months time that this is really not going anywhere, then I will re-design my website and maybe drop the diary all together.

For now I take a few months to experiment, to see if and what people are commenting, to see if this takes me too much time and, in general, to see where this is leading me.

The last point to address is the fact that I am hurting people with my writing. This is actually a sore point for me.

If I post an entry after a tutorial the chances are that I am so much into it that I do not have the appropriate detachment to ponder my words. If in one way what I write is a documentation of real feelings it is also true that I am partial and that I put the emphasis on what seems relevant to me in that moment, ignoring how this might be interpreted by the person that reads it.

I have already done this mistake a long time ago.

When I passed my Baccalaureate I was asked to write an article for our student paper. I paired with a school mate of mine and we thought it would be funny to write a series of poems comparing each of our teachers to an animal. Our intent was to be goliardic and to use some nice illustrations that I had found in an animal book of the 19^th century. We had a lot of fun writing those poems, but we obviously went too far. We ended up publishing a text that was not representative of what we really thought…but it was funny.

We soon realized that the joke was not funny for everybody and a couple teachers took it extremely badly, to the point that they did not ever wanted to speak to us anymore.

I had hurt people that I actually cared about… I was mortified. I had absolutely not realized that once words are written they are open to interpretations and that those escape the intentions of the authors.

I swore then that I had learned my lesson. But apparently I have not.

So… what can I do now?

I am taking the decision to keep in my blog only the entries that speak about me, and that involve people in my private sphere, for which I can take responsibility.

It is my choice to speak about me, but I will try to limit the consequences on others…

So for now, this PhD Blog/Diary will continue for a few months under these new rules… and I will then reassess the whole experiment around September.Let’s give it some digestive time…

Also: thanks to those who helped in this feed-back process… thanks to you things are moving…

It has been a three months project to put together this website and I was getting used to the idea that it was all in my hands – in my private sphere – and not in a public sphere. I have now to readjust with the idea that this could actually be read!!!

Huuuuum… exciting, but also, quite scary… Do I really want people that I know to read my PhD Blog? Do I really want my tutors to check my moods online? Will I ever have the time to populate it with fresh content? Have I really considered the repercussions and possible implications of all this?

Probably not. And that, I suspect,  is the whole point: not knowing what is coming next. What sort of experiment is a straight line with a clear view? None.

Ok then, let’s get ready for the “web effect”: a sort of labyrinth with no clear outcome and a few dangers attached… but maybe a huge treasure at the end of it! Is this not the mythic structure of any journey? hummm,… exciting!

This is really the “world wide web effect”: a voice in a multi-dimensional space… will there be an echo?

The doctor obviously gave me the standard antihistamine that does not do anything… she said that I just had to wait a week and it would calm down by itself. When I insisted in having an idea of the cause she said that “we do not know, it could be anything”… very reassuring!

I hated this doctor for the vagueness she left me with, I hated her for making me feel vulnerable, open to a violent allergic skin reaction without knowing what to do to avoid it next time. After irritation and mild hate, fear kicked in: and what about if this urticaria happened again in the middle of a trip in a remote country? If I do not know what provokes it… it could happen anywhere and at anytime…

The fear of not controlling really freaked me out. I needed to understand and find the cause, if not I was in danger.

I am back home now, sipping my cappuccino and thinking about the whole episode… No surprises I am interested in Cybernetics! Was it not called the “science of control”? I am probably a total control freak. Worst: I am resisting it. Although control would make me feel better (if I knew the cause of urticaria I could prevent it next time) it is actually the part of cybernetics that is not about control that interests me.

Andrew Pickering’s “ontology of the unknowable”, Francisco Varela’s ‘enactment’, Gordon Pask’s Musicolor… all the aspects of cybernetics that open the view of life as an unpredictable, multilayered world of possibilities… basically everything BUT controllable…

Is this not ironic? What am I searching in this PhD? Am I trying to escape from my own patterns of inner control?

I somewhere desperately need to get out of the feeling of control, I somewhere know that control is not the answer for the life I want to have… and yet, this is where I am: stuck between the fear of not controlling my own life and the need of freedom and lightness.

I kind of see a pattern of fear here: fear of not being able to cope (with the urticaria, with the PhD, with the building work in the house…). Somehow I would like to be reassured that I will be fine, that I will work it out… why?

Maybe I have not learned as a kid that “I will be OK”.

When I had repetitive cases of ear infection in my teens I was scared, scared of not recovering, scared of being different from the others, scared of pain.

I could see on my mother’s eyes that she was preoccupied too, and this did not reassure me whatsoever. She would deal with the situation on a practical level: taking the appointment with the doctor, handling “what to do about it”, but she did not reassure my emotion of fragility, actually she probably re-enforced it. My father, on the other hand, was disregarding the issue. For him “everything was OK” I would grow out of ear infections just as he did grow out of chest infections at the same age… this seemed to me, at the time, reassuring. By minimizing the problem he made me feel better… things were all right after all. What I did not realize then was that by minimizing the problem he was also disregarding my emotions. Instead of learning that it was ok to feel scared, instead of being hold in his arms to calm my panic, I learned that it was not OK to be scared. I also, as a consequence, did not learn how to cope with it.

The double message was: you should not be scared (but I was) and you should learn to deal with it from a practical point of view (taking an appointment with the doctor). What was completely left out was “me”, me the scared kid that just wanted to be reassured. Understanding my frustration, allowing me to feel lost, and cocooning me in a comforting adult embrace would have probably made the trick. But that was not the style of my parents. Although they truly loved us (me and my brother) they would not expressed it like this. My mum, being French, was loving but not very physical, and my father, although Italian, was escaping from his own emotions, therefore was completely unable to provide any emotional support or attachment to others. I am not blaming them… they had their own past, their own issues, and they did what they could with what they were…

But here I am… more than thirty years later and still fragile and somehow scared…

If as an adult I now realize that controlling and dealing with the practical side of things is not enough for me, but I am struggling to find in me the confidence that “I will be all right”… maybe because I have not experience it as a kid. I just do not know how to do this.

No wonders than that the key words of my PhD are “experience”, “emotion”, “unknowability”, “co-arizing”, “multiple”, “interaction”… all words that point out to a vision of life as fluid, as not controllable, as dependent from interactivity with the others, with out environment… all words that bring me away from a vision of control that did not work for me, as it always addressed only my rational side, leaving my emotional needs on the side.

I am sure it has to do more with me than with the PhD… after all don’t we all find our topics and our methodology following a personal path that means something for us from another place than the intellect?

I think it is my guts that are interested in the position with the observer… I think it comes from far… from somewhere in my childhood where I felt I was observed, and maybe judged, but “the others”… I presume the “others” were mainly my father. His way to listen to our intellectual side, but never to our emotional side. For him that was a danger zone, he was probably just defending himself, but for us –the kids, the people around him- it meant that he was always an outsider, an observer positioned outside of the dialogue, always in a safe zone, where nothing could reach him and were he would use his intellect to assess the situation.

What did I learn from those early feelings? I learned that feelings, emotions that are not verbalized are not appropriate. I learned that what was OK was to “speak” of stuff, to formalize it, to control it. I also learned to protect myself from something that was obviously dangerous: vulnerability.

For me Cybernetics is probably a theory that allows me to speak about my own revolt to this family communication system. It is a way to claim that the observed is always part of the system and that he his influenced –and he does influence as well- the environment. Cybernetic is my way to claim back the injustice that I felt on my father’s so called objectivity. It is about claiming back my voice. It is about accusing him of not been so right, after all. It is about giving him the responsibilities that he never took –on an emotional level. It is about trying to accept that it is all right to be vulnerable, it is all right to “not know”.

Ironically I am doing a PhD. I have supervisors that observe me, judge me, but that I feel are not on my side. Or maybe not. Maybe it is just my projections on them. Maybe they are trying to help me by just saying: come out of your comfort zone, have fun, get out of theory, come up with your own way of thinking…

I have a sort of “déjà vu” feeling. Walls from my childhood coming back again and again in the process of this PhD.

Cheep psychoanalysis? Maybe.

Easy projections? Maybe.

But there is something there. We do not choose a PhD topic for nothing. It is a process of learning. And I think it is more about learning about ourselves than about learning about a topic. This is why I think this diary is important. Because what I end up writing on my final PhD will be only a fraction of what this process is. The “official text” will be the one of mastering a process of research, but the “real text”, the “felt text”, the experience of doing a PhD is a complete other thing: it is about being lost and discovering one’s barriers. It is about fear and passion mixed in a survival quest. It is about experiencing the multiple levels of our personality, the cohabitation of body and mind in what, after all, is our very own life.

On the way back I was driving. It took about one hour. What is bizarre is that I got into a half conscious thinking mode about my PhD. I was thinking about it but I was also driving… so I was in a sort of semi-lucid state.

Things suddenly got much clearer. I had to follow what was exiting me: first do a website about my PhD. This had to be half about documenting my process of doing the PhD and half about the research itself on interactive documentary. Also, I was not going to give up my classification about modes of interaction. No I was to apply it to practical project. I was to find an example of what I believe might be positive about each of those modes and then I was to build the examples. This would lead me into a practical PhD more than a theoretical one. Also, I was to write a book about interactive documentary. If my supervisors are not interested in my categories about interactive documentary there might be another public that it might interest. I personally would value a book that could set the field with examples and trying to define what is interesting about each of those genres… so why not doing it?

There you go. It all seems clearer today. No, what seems clearer is what I want to do. This does obviously not fit with what my supervisors seem to like or want. Maybe I should change supervisors? Maybe I should move department? University? Or maybe just write the book and forget the PhD (that is what Lev Manovich told me one year ago when I had a tutorial with him).

Food for thoughts….

My presentation went pretty well as well. I had lots of questions and feed-back. I was quite happy and I made a lot of contacts.

When I came back home and I described the day to Marc, my husband, he said “well, for once I can tell that your are really speaking from you heart. You are really alive today!”.

Gosh… this made me think. Was it so obvious that I am bored to death about theory and I want to go back to some sort of production? Maybe I should follow my heart more…

The vicious point in a PhD is this constant need for an argument: in order to argue you need to know what you want to defend. In order to defend you need to know who are your opponents and why they are wrong (or not right enough). So you are always “defending” yourself by asserting your position as true.

To start with: this is not me. I rarely feel that I am the only one to be true. I search for options…

The argument methodology also assumes that you know what you want to defend. This is quite tricky, as most of my life as a PhD student is spent in learning and making connections between things… but not really knowing where I want to go.

Trap n.2: I think I need to know in order to have an argument. “Knowing” is a limitless activity: you never get to the feeling of knowing. But in order to write for the PhD I need to know what I want to defend… so I am back to square one.

This leads me to the question: can I admit that I do not know? Can I admit that I am more interested in the process itself than in the result?

I am a bee stuck into a glass with a book on top. I see what is outside but cannot go there. To be frank I am convinced that if I knew where I wanted to go the glass would disappear by itself. My frustration does not come from the fact that I am a prisoner, but from the fact that I am not sure of where I should (would/could?) go if the glass was not there. My strategy is to keep looking outside and try to imagine how I could get there and ponder if it is worth it.

The frustration is increasing: since I do not decide anything I stay trapped, and now I am panicking because I realise that I’ll might not go anywhere.

I step back for a moment: how can I decide where I would like to go if I do not try it? How can I decide on theoretical ground, without experiencing it?

I realize I trap myself by not engaging with the process, but trying to control where I will go before going: this is mission impossible.

I am doing the same with my PhD: before writing the 20,000 words I need to produce for in a month time I would like to know what I am going to say and why. I need to know before I start. But then I realize I do not know, I never have the feeling of “knowing enough”… so I freeze and go back to the safe position of “I should read more to be clearer”. Back to square one: I read more but things get more complicated instead of being easier…

I need to engage with the process. Go for something that “feels right” and then discover things around it more than trying to “know that it is right” before starting – because this will never happen.

The holiday in Rome was way too good: I felt free, loved and warm… the return to my studio in London and my writing is pretty hash…

What makes me panic is the absence of boundaries in a PhD. Everything is possible, it makes me spend more time thinking about the possibilities than about what I want to do.

I suspect I need to be contained. Whether it is by someone, or by a limited scale that allows me to see where I am going… but this endless freedom of the PhD freezes me and sends me back to my deepest fears… how to deal with freedom? How to know what I really want? How not to fear other people’s judgment? How to know if I am going into the right direction? And what is right anyway???

I need to accept my fears and stay in my anxiety… can I learn to know that I do not know? Can I accept to be unclear?

If I don’t I’ll spend my time banging my head on the wall and whishing that I were different…

I think it is a question of survival: learn to be lost.

To start with: this is not me. I rarely feel that I am the only one to be true. I search for options…

The argument methodology also assumes that you know what you want to defend. This is quite tricky, as most of my life as a PhD student is spent in learning and making connections between things… but not really knowing where I want to go.

Trap n.2: I think I need to know in order to have an argument. “Knowing” is a limitless activity: you never get to the feeling of knowing. But in order to write for the PhD I need to know what I want to defend… so I am back to square one.

This leads me to the question: can I admit that I do not know? Can I admit that I am more interested in the process itself than in the result?

I am writing, painfully, but surely.

I am the bee now. I do not fly with ease. I am still scared of taking the wrong direction. I would like to know where I want to end up to be able to decide the best itinerary from the start. That would make me feel secure. The reality is that I do not know where I want to end, so I do not know how to get there either. Each flower is a starting point that leads me to the next. This temporal exploration mode petrifies me because I fear not arriving in time. I have a deadline for end of May!

I am a bee that flies with half wings and is not enjoying the flowers it encounters because I am too occupied looking at my next possible flower.

Something will have to change.

The PhD is putting me in a box. A theoretical box. A box full of ideas and books but far from me. I do not fit in or, let’ s rephrase it: most of me is outside of the box, and only a marginal little part of my being –mainly the rational and abstract part- can fit in. This is highly frustrating: I spend most of my time reading books in libraries or in temples of silence… My body does not move: only my eyes seem to be authorised to have a life in this process. Great! Now I have a soar neck and a lot of negative energy trapped into my body. Can I continue to ignore “life” outside of the books?

Of course I could run, yes I could fit into my daily scheddule some healthy sport… but I have already too many things that I have to fit in those few hours of my day that do not have to be spend in “monacal reclusion”… To start with I have my kids to look after! And I want to do so, I enjoy so. Then I have to work and prepare my lessons for LCC. Then I have a house that does not seem to turn if I am not there. Definitively my house is not autopoietic: no self-organisation, no self-making. I have to be there for the online shopping, birthday parties, appointments with the electrician… etc).

So… how many things am I supposed to fit into those miserable 24 hrs!

Ah, and, yes, I also need to sleep… it is a shame but if not I feel a wreck.

Did I forget my husband in this schedule? Well, yes, I want him to fit in too.

So: either I want too much, or I need to change my approach to my PhD.

Mind me it is interesting that I think so… normally –when I am on the side of the viewer/user- I do not give a damn about other’s people comments… Who cares to what other thought about a video… But now that the video is mine my position has changed… now I am into an ego-trip…

I think her e-mail is quite funny and typical of her:

“Hi,

I think it’s harmless – I’m like a little pussycat so no damage…

and it’s a great piece.

good luck superwomen!

Iris”

I realize myself that I feel strange about uploading my own privacy. I am aware of sharing with the rest of the world by inner thoughts, the privacy of my house and the face of my kids… I do not feel comfortable with it. Why? Fear? Of what? Maybe I am not a very performative person at heart…

The website gives me three options: upload on youtube (meaning: everybody can see me), uploading on GoogleVideo and just sending the link to the Flying website (meaning: only people that have the link –so nobody- can see me) or uploading directly on the Flying website (meaning: all the women that are engaging with Jennifer’s film can see me). My first instinct is to keep safe and stay as hidden as possible (so via Google video). My second thoughts are: common you should play the game… if this is an experiment, a way for you to get involved… then you have to plunge and go public. What is the sense of participating if you do not allow other women/watchers to see you?

I am still pondering between rationality and guts…

I filmed a mini documentary using Jennifer Fox’s ‘passing the camera’ technique.

I am feeling very excited about loosing the boring books for a second and going back to “praxis”. Seeing the Flying documentary inspired me to try something myself. What is all this theory about if I do not get my hand dirty? Shall I plunge and take the risk? Shall I participate myself to the passing the camera experiment?

I have decided to try and I feel very invigorated about that.

I have invited Iris and Anat yesterday night and filmed our conversation. It was so much fun!!! A bit intimidating at the start but… we got quite good after a while.

Is the fact of passing the camera to the other people while you are speaking really making things more spontaneous? Obviously not completely. We are always aware that this is being recorded… we are still performing… but what is different is that we are all on the same level. No director anymore. No camerawoman that scrutinises us… everybody gets to participate and to share the burden and experiment of being a performer and a voyeur of other people’s performances!

This is why I am starting this diary: to help me to see where I am know, more than where I would like to be.

If I make the process part of my experience, then I will maybe feel more “real”, and less trapped in theory.

I am thinking of creating a webpage where all the little moments that constitute my PhD will have a space. The final manuscript is for me just one aspect of my experience of the PhD. Like in documentary making the final film is just the distilled version that the author creates for the viewers. The experience of reality is very different from the mediated representation of reality.

If I want to document my PhD, if I want to give credit to the PhD as a process rather than an objective truth (in which I do not believe anyway), then I need to find a space to give to this process. This space could be a webpage where other people can participate and share my process.

I see the written manuscript as an exercise of style: proving (to whom?) that I can organise reality and theory in a linear logic. This is fine. It is a useful skill to have. But this cannot be it! Can the skill of faking objectivity be the maximum we need to lean from academic life? This cannot be it… this is just a partial view of what an individual is and can be… I am not one, I am multiple. If I want to achieve this PhD I cannot fake to be only one. I need to find a way to include the other parts of me. Making a diary, engaging with the process of making the PhD, the little ideas that come in the tube, the people I meet that I learn from, the kids that make me laugh and give me an intuition… all this need to find a place. Could the web diary be a solution? Can I find a methodology that allows me to mix more than one aspect of my personality?