I am now at that stage of my PhD research when I “wean” myself off of research and start to try to form an addiction to data organization and writing. Although I have yet to write anything formal for my dissertation, I am starting to work on some articles and paper conferences, which gets me to think about my dissertation in a more visceral and tangible way (maybe the viscerality has to do with the knots in my stomach when I think about it for too long).

Why the knots? Ok, so it is inherently a hard sort of thing to do but really I think it is plain old scary because, well, no one tells you how to write such a “document”! There is next to no guidance which in some ways in nice (no one to cramp your (life)style but on the other hand, it seems wacky wacked). It is akin to running a 5 k and then switching to a marathon with no training in between and no “thirst quencher” to aid you through the struggle.

The powers that be who accept you supposedly only accept very independent thinkers and researchers. And now I know: because, well, there is no one there to give you even the slightest hint as to how to write a book. It is kinda just suppose to happen and you hope for the best.

Writing the dissertation holds the same type of obscure mystique as the “fieldwork experience” for Anthropologists. It is a scary, mythical unknown that you are sort of thrown into, and you have to figure it out all by yourself, groping blind for the right path so that you can finally begin to do some work. But in fieldwork, one hits this time or moment, when the fear subsides, things start clicking and making sense, and one even kinda enjoys the process. For some this is a a gradual happening while for others, it happens more like a Wolfian epiphany that is invoked by some late night drunken escapade which for me is more likely to happen on a late night IRC debate when I fire off words as fast as my non-native typing fingers can type. But it is precisely through learning from others that you come to “know” what the hell is going on.

But I doubt such an epiphany will ever come with the writing of the dissertation.
Or I imagine that it will come afterward when everything is said and done. Maybe I am being a little dramatic tonight but it is for the most part a very solitary process and I am not a very solitrary girl. So I think I have come up with a solution…

Tonight while hanging out on the IRC channel #debian-devel, I grew so envious of the how people could:

a) just pop in to get some help for something they are working on
b) take a little break from work with others who totally share their space mind space

I then began to have little dreams and visions of having my very own anthropology/geek/science tech/dissertation channel that would ease the fright, the pain, really the lacuna of dark asociality that is writing a dissertation and also provide endless amusement with some in-house procrastination. I think it is a tremendous solution to what I think is a real problem but I then also have to solve the problem of how to get what really are a bunch of neo-luddities onto IRC without having them think that I “have just gone native.” Well, one can dream, right?