Good Day

Ah, today has been good! I only managed to read one chapter but it was a very important one and full of info that I have been worried about since being in India!

It is starting to make me fear going back to complete my fieldwork less... Which is qute an achievement. And is giving me a structure and framework within which to think and plan my actions for work in India. What a relief! All the issues I had about how to approach people in India, how to place myself in the research, and all the criticisms I hold about development work - while I was in the thick of it and, therefore, a horrible hypocrite - carrying all these worries around like guilty baggage has been addressed and rationalised in this one chapter. I am also building up a great reading list to continue these thoughts and avenues of exploration. For the first time in ages I feel like I actually own my work, and am like a proper PhD student.

Only downfall is that I keep forgetting that tomorrow is Friday! I keep thinking I still have two full days of work before the weekend but I don't. Oh well, is only of pyschological import.

Fantastically as well, today I found a pottery course that is just up the road! And it is affordable! That would be fabulous! BUT it starts on Monday! Will I have time to join? I dunno - am going to London on Saturday for a friend's birthday barbecue which threatens to be an all-dayer at the pub (threatens?! Who am I kidding - *will* be) and should be driving back up on Sunday but have made provisions to maybe stay on Sun if too hungover/drunk to drive. Anyway, it may not come off but I hope it does! Would be brilliant, such a great anecdote to work.

So that's me. Finally, finally, me and work are getting on again. I am also starting to feel that I have routine as well - I work in the week and then I have the weekend off. This is because this is what I have been doing! Been able to do too - am not off getting engaged/having beeday parties/moving house/grieving any more. So as I settle down I hope to become soooo much more productive and start to enjoy life more, instead of trying to settle down constantly!

Deadline day 1 June... I feel very confident that I will have something to say. I feel so much like this reading will spread its tenticles and create my methodology: the theoretical guidelines needed to help me order my thoughts, inform my ethics, choose methods, influence and justify how I interact and present myself in India, and how I finally analyse my data. EXCELLENT!!!!

:0)))

x J