The process of trying to write sometimes feel like a process of constantly distracting myself: re-reading papers, reviewing notes, making notes on notes, changing the work flow. At times I feel like I am not writing enough, and at other times, it all seems like a necessary part of the process. Throw the nervous feelings of actually having your name attached to a thesis for all eternity, and you wonder why the scheduled defense seems to be creeping up so quickly.

Flipping the calendar over in a new page, a few things seem more like a reality than they have ever been. One of the hardest things for me to do is to ask for time for myself, but with two months to go before my defence and lots of ideas to organize and finesse, everything that can take a back seat is tucked nicely out of the way. Of course, it seems like as soon as there’s room, new things find their way to capture my attention. Some of it has to do with the process of reading and writing, other has to do with panel, presentation and paper proposals, all of it pointing to directions that I’d like to explore once my thesis is wrapped up. I couldn’t tune them out because of their relevance to the things I’m thinking and writing about, and perhaps more importantly, things that I’m not addressing within the scope of my thesis work, but definitely things I’d like to find ways to keep doing, especially with regards to knowledge preservation and transmission.

Next post will likely be from The International Council of Traditional Music in St. John’s Newfoundland. In the mean time, I’ll be spending lots of time in the parks, on my balcony, hammering the rest of this thesis out, because it’s finally warm in Toronto!