I’ve decided to start writing articles, or a blog of some kind, to my website again. I’ll just incorporate them into my main site instead of juggling between several sites. I have also transferred some posts from my old blog site here. So there are some reminders from my MA days.
One of the main reasons for these texts is that one stumbles on so many side tracks when researching for a PhD. So many interesting ideas are just screaming for attention but the poor bastards will never make it to the actual thesis. So this will be a kind of kindergarten for all prematurely born, inbred and disfigured thoughts. 😉 And perhaps there’s also a little room for serious contemplation.
Lately I’ve been a bit frustrated as I’ve been reading a lot of interesting stuff which will never make it to the thesis. Theories from Umberto Eco, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Walter J. Ong, JL Austin etc. Really fascinating books that inspire my thinking but in the end might not have anything to do with my thesis. It would be a shame to just forget all these good thoughts.
Writing, like so many other skills, requires practice. Neglect to keep it up and you will get rusty. So writing things in a more relaxed blog-like manner should also help me keep up my skills. And it lowers the bar to also write something for the actual thesis.
And the PhD is a long process. I still have about three years to go. Any kind of diary will help me to review my own progress later on.
Of course, there’s one more aspect to all this. Perhaps the most important and serious one. Procrastination. Never underestimate the power of the dark side! But if one procrastinates by writing articles on things like philosophy or semiotics, it can’t be that bad! Right?