(Photo – Reaching the top of the mountain Meeknoken on Averoy, West-Coast of Norway).
Taking the high road, taking the low road, the research map is not set but improvised, keep writing, wondering and climbing.
I am nearly half way through this PhD journey, it still excites me and requires an inordinate amount of determination to keep going. Having walked many mountains in Wales and Norway during my twenties, I often think of research like walking. The top of the mountain constantly looks closer than it is, there is always a point when you need to push yourself, it’s important to have provisions and to drink from cool mountain streams.
Having now completed seven interviews, transcriptions, graphic scores and analysis, the participant’s voices resound in my head, like musical leitmotifs. I can conjour up the sound of their voices in a moment. Their experiences fill my mind and I keep wondering where exactly this research is taking us. I feel I am finally starting to understand what the research journey is about; listening, wondering, going backwards and forwards, round in circles, letting the map change and being prepared for your knowledge and life view to expand.
I am sure in the future I will look back and see just how much this research journey is changing me personally. Curiously I find my creativity expanding, a new flexibility in my bass-playing fingers, and the art work more fluid and loose. As an accompaniment to this journey new songs have been written and art work bubbles away underneath. I hope to reach the top of the PhD ‘Meekknoken’ in a couple of years, but know rain, brambles, swarms of insects and unmarked paths are all the hazzards along the way!
skylark arts 