While going through the hard times of finishing my PhD dissertation I joked about the time after it, suggesting that I might go into the symptoms similar to the people who retire and don’t know what to do with their life then. Well, I should know better what to joke about :)

Now, waiting for the PhD committee to react on my work and preparing for the PhD defense I see shrunken horizons expand: once the PhD is in the past and I’m free to do whatever I want to do, what that would be?

There are multiple parts to it. The first one is about the place for work in my life. As I read The 4-Hour Workweek or The Family Sabbatical Handbook I keep wondering how to combine the work I want to do with all other things I want to do as well. And, following parenting parts of the blogoshpere brings enough examples of alternative work-life balance scenarios that are family-centred (e.g. the one of Angelina Hart that travels the world with her daughters and produces The Little Travellers DVDs).

The second part is about work. When I started the PhD I didn’t want to be a researcher, but wanted time and space for a research-based practice: being able to reflect, to explore conceptual world behind what happens day-to-day and then bring those insights back to work. What I didn’t realise that once you do a PhD you become a researcher :)

So now I’m torn between thinking of an academic career or of one of a practitioner. Of course it’s possible to live in both worlds at the same time, but as any other case of brokering it’s hard work (that comes with it’s own occupational hazards :)))

Finally, there are all those interesting topics to explore…

• Anna
• PhD cover art
• PhD supervision: a bit of trust, a bit of imagination

It’s dark and quiet – only clicking of the keyboard. My two favourite men are asleep and I’m typing. I can easily picture myself like that – in a few months – working on the finishing touches of my dissertation.

late at night, 3 July 2007

It took longer than I thought. But I’m there now, putting words together like threading beads into a necklace, typing when my favourite men are asleep, working on the finishing touches of my dissertation.

Hard to believe.

[I'd better go and work on it :)]

• Doing it differently :)
• Away
• Unsettledness

It’s my birthday today. It happen to be a day full of emotions – getting up early to write, driving through autumn sun to get relaxing foot massage as my birthday present, nice conversations at work, smiling at birthday greetings popping up on different channels and writing that was easy for a change.

In the evening I found that my uncle died yesterday. They didn’t want to tell me, but as soon as I heard my mom’s voice I knew something was wrong. Being sad, being happy that last time in Russia we spent a good time together, being angry that I couldn’t be there with my family, smiling at the little guy who wants to play, trying not to be afraid thinking of my family being so far away…

But behind all that being grateful for how much I have – including this day, full of emotions… Realising that whatever happens, the best thing I can do is to be here, to be present, to live fully now, to be with those I love, to do things I enjoy doing…

• Unsettledness
• Soul searching
• More on technology adoption: wifi bunny

Last night I had an impulsive wish to try out my wedding dress. Next to the pleasure of realising that it still fits, the experience brought lots of thoughts and feelings.

Of course, it brought the memories of the day (actually days, since we celebrated twice, in Russia and in the Netherlands) and the strong feelings behind it as we did a little dance in a living room.

However, as soon as I put the dress I also remembered that I actually planned to wear parts of it on more occasions, but never looked around to find matching pieces to turn it into something that doesn’t resemble the original look and never looked for an opportunity to wear a new combination. Which is pity, since I loved the dress and the idea of wearing it more than once.

As my mind started to work in that direction, I found that I already had the matching pieces (so I tried a combination immediately) and the occasion (so I discussed it with Robert and even thought of a matching outfit for him).

And then, of course, I saw a parallel to the PhD chapter that I’m currently working on and a discussion how the past, captured in my weblog comes back to live, gets combined with other bits and becomes part of the future…

• Back to writing
• The power of visible loose ends
• PhD blogging and paper writing

Trying to get back to “normal” blogging now it’s interesting to look back and to reflect on what happened with my blogging routines over last couple of years. The graph below provides an overview of a number of weblog posts I wrote per month between June 2002 and December 2007 with an indication of corresponding events in my life.

Little palm trees represent summer holidays (not necessary in some tropical location :). Winter holidays are not that obvious, but usually there is a drop in January (not in December, since Russian Christmas/NY holidays are 1-10 January and I tend to synchronise those with my family and friends in Russia).

Fire represents period of my weblog server being offline for 2 weeks after the fire that damaged the network at University of Twente (I lived on campus then and my weblog was running on my home machine).

“Relation” and “baby” – since I’ve got other things to do in my free time instead of blogging. My maternity leave in Jan-Apr 2007 is clearly visible.

“Project management” and “Microsoft”: not that important by themselves, but more as an indicator of my stress levels. In that period I was juggling coordination of an EU project, 10 weeks internship in US and personal uncertainties that came from the perspective of not returning to Russia as I had always planned.

Although all those things are important as factors behind the dropping frequency of writing, their influence is indirect. What I think is the real issue behind not blogging is broken information processing routines, especially those related to reading weblogs – those deserve a separate post…

• Love that takes your fears away
• War in Iraq
• Blogs to improve writing

It is amazing how much observing Alexander exploring rain tells about human nature: the need for a safe place to start, playing on a boundary alternating between a few more steps to explore and coming back for reassurance, gradually venturing into more and more scary territory, getting confident, having fun while getting wet and cold…

I treasure moments like this – when he grabs my hand and invites me to join the fun, so I can shed the skin of things learned about getting wet and cold in the rain, and instead just be a kid who enjoys the simple fun of being in the rain.

• Should be a good sign…
• The kindness of strangers
• Escaping to Paris

While trying to find things related to my previous post I came across a few posts I forgot I wrote. While reading this one I became mesmerized by “madly letting go” in the quote from Donella Meadows:

I don’t think there are cheap tickets to system change. You have to work at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off paradigms. In the end, it seems that leverage has less to do with pushing levers than it does with disciplined thinking combined with strategically, profoundly, madly letting go.

I’m getting more and more convinced that letting go is one of the key skills in whatever 2.0 – web, business, science, life…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/11/29.html#a1959; comments are here.

• Unbloggable time
• War in Iraq
• Baby-blogs: pregnancy, birth and all kinds of things about parenting

It’s dark and quiet – only clicking of the keyboard. My two favourite men are asleep and I’m typing. I can easily picture myself like that – in a few months – working on the finishing touches of my dissertation.

Still a few months to go – I’d better get some sleep before the little man wakes up :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/07/03.html#a1920; comments are here.

• Hypertext writing
• Knowledge work as discretionary behaviour
• Fever and methodology

Today is five years since I blog. Time flies. Writing to a weblog gives me an extra evidence of it – time becomes more tangible when you see it as a timestamp on a story that feels so recent. But having it there, written, also gives it depth – showing that the path between then and now has been long.

Today Alexander is 5 months old. Time flies, faster then I’d like to. Sure, we wait for every new development (when will he start sitting by himself? crawling? talking?), but every time I hold him in my arms I want to make time running slower. May be I should write more – to stretch those moments, at least on the screen…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/06/21.html#a1914; comments are here.

• Affectionate writing reduces cholesterol
• Time for fun
• Time in blogging: catching a moment to write

I almost forgot how does it feel – when ideas run in your head back and forth waiting for you to catch them and to turn into a text. When you don’t think much about things that might not work, but, instead, focus on making things happen.

And that I actually feel like writing after evening play – bath – milk – sleep routine with Alexander :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/06/13.html#a1910; comments are here.

• Sweet home
• Traces of fear
• One more day for learning