Boxes and Boxes

Oh my lord.

The boxes of writing I have begun to sort through.

Holy moly.

There are four huge bins of notebooks, poetry, manuscripts, journals and journals, cards, spending plans, photographs.

A life unboxed.

I am beginning the study part of my PhD study for my disseration.

I am doing an evocative autoethnography–which is basically a study of oneself in reflection and conversation with society.

Recovery society and tattoo society and society in general.

I am using triangulation of my materials to bear out what I think I am going to discover in question to my dissertation inquiry–which is the Transformative Tattoo; What Can Healing from Trauma Look Like?

There’s a lot of moving parts and I’m not going to get into all that right now.

However.

I am excited to be at this part in the work, albeit also intimidated, there is so much material to sort through.

I recently, Friday, got an email confirmation that the dean of my department has approved my dissertation proposal, signed all the paperwork that my PhD committee has also signed and sent it onward and upward.

To the provost.

So, as of Friday, the department of the Provost as received my proposal.

I need one more signature.

Then.

Yes.

I will become a PhDc (Candidate).

One step closer to PhD.

I really hope to be a doctor by this time next year.

I want to defend my dissertation next August, the same weekend as the PhD intensive that my school holds.

With all the fingers crossed, I am hoping to defend in person.

However, I know that it may be virtual depending on what happens with pandemic.

FYI.

Working on a PhD during a pandemic while maintaining a full client case load is the way through.

I am too busy to get too involved in all the crazy out there.

Not to say that I am not aware of it, I am, so are my clients, I hear about it every week and there is so, so, so much anxiety, but I try to stay out of it as much as I can.

I am thinking of deactivating my social media.

I have had FaceCrack off my phone now for two years–got rid of it when I started my PhD program, but I still have and use Instagram on my phone.

I have not, however, disabled Facecrack in general, so I can hop onto it through my laptop.

Which I am on a lot.

I have been doing about 28-30 client sessions a week through telehealth an the majority of those are via video, I’m always on my laptop.

Even when I have phone sessions, I still have to hop on my laptop to do my session notes after.

I just notice it’s too easy to slip off into social media, “for just a few minutes.”

And it’s just a mucky, sticky, uncomfortable place.

I don’t participate in conversations, I stay neutral, I don’t air my opinions, although I have unfollowed a few people who are far outside my comfort zone with their opinions and I have unfriended a few people from my high school who posted racist white privileged content on their media pages.

Um.

No.

Having been one of the only people of color at my school when I transferred into my middle school in 7th grade, I know very, very well how racist the community I was living in was.

Some via ignorance, you scoop up what your parents serve when you are a child, some via hate.

Either way.

No thanks.

And don’t get me wrong, being a mixed race woman of color growing up in a white culture I experienced plenty of racism at the hands of my own mother and her side of the family.

These are also not conversations I have had with anyone on that side of my family.

Nope.

And no thank you.

My family members that seem to idle on that side of the road I have unfollowed.

I love my family, but I don’t have to submit to witnessing racism or privilege.

I have dealt with it enough in my life and I know it will always show up in my life.

It always has.

Anyway.

That was a segue.

Really what gets me about social media is that it has an algorithm that makes little to no sense for me and it’s a time suck.

My time is valuable and I need to use it wisely.

So I flirt with deactivating FaceCrack.

I haven’t done it yet, but it’s tempting.

Note to self.

I don’t like this new format that WordPress has set up.

Sigh.

Another note to self.

This has probably been the new format for a minute and I just haven’t gotten on it to blog recently.

I do find it challenging to show up here when I am on my laptop so much.

But.

I told myself today it was time to hop back on the horse.

If only to keep my writing and typing chops up to par.

I don’t want to be lax about the writing practice. I am not in my PhD coursework any more, I’m officially cleared that, which is brilliant and wonderful.

But.

Also.

I am not writing papers at all this semester.

No paper writing on topics and electives I wasn’t all that interested in is lovely, but I was getting a lot of practice at writing when I constantly had a paper due.

I don’t have any papers due anymore.

The next “paper” I write will be my dissetation.

And I don’t believe I will start writing my dissertation chapters until January when I finish my study.

I have given myself the fall to do my study and sort through my materials and also the first month of the year, January, but by the time winter break is done, I want to transition into the writing.

Then give myself the spring semester to write, the summer to polish, and be ready to defend at the end of summer.

I want to have my reached my goal of defending my Phd on the three year anniversary of having started the program.

A program that is 4.5 years long.

I am proud of myself for pushing the way that I have–finishing the coursework in two years instead of three, working over the summer to do my dissertation proposal instead of waiting for this fall semester, and setting out to do a study that has no participants, just me and my conversations with the world.

This is not to say that what I am doing is easy.

It is not.

Seriously, you should see the stacks of material I have to sort.

Plus.

This blog.

I am using material from this blog as well.

And I have over 2600 blogs on here.

Anyway.

I digress again.

The point is that I want to write, I want to keep my writing chops sound, I need to keep practicing and that practice comes in the morning when I write my three pages long hand and now, again, in the evenings, I need to commit to doing my blog again at least a few times a week.

I figure it will be mostly on the weekends since I run clients pretty late during the week–my last sessions end at 8:30p.m. M-F and then once a month I’m teaching on the weekends, but if I set my eyes on the prize and get back on here and keep my fingers warm.

Well.

I sense that when it is time to write the thing, oh la la, I’m going to write a dissertation, I will be ready.

So.

Lovely to let myself be here and hello to you all out there who I haven’t given you much to read over the last couple of years, I’m not back in full force.

But.

I.

Am.

Back.