This made me think.
(a) Since last field season photos of wildlife took over a tiny bit. There aren't enough "big" events to balance out all the in-between fieldwork posts, but that doesn't seem like a reason good enough to stop sharing the wildlife stories - they get me to blog, and lets face it, isn't Oz wildlife fascinating?
(b) PhD isn't just about those "big" events. It's mostly a series of tiny-tiny tasks. Tedious ones, repetitive ones, problematic ones, confusing ones... A series of solving problems, smaller and bigger. It's a lot of reading, writing, coding, analysing... A lot of thinking. One step forward, two steps back. How come I am omitting this, when this is the essence of my PhD? Isn't that just silly?
Moving forward the general plan is:
- Keep up with the in-between fieldwork posts, giving you a glimpse into the beautiful Australian wildlife and showing that even when it seems like there is no time to do anything outside of work one should at least try. I will try to get those out every other Thursday.
- Keep summarising and reflecting on those "big" events. It's nice to have a record of those, even if I only get around to writing up a selection of what I go to.
- Do more "occasional" posts on workflow, tools, habits... Like this one on my writing tools. Do smaller ones, but more often? I wonder if that would be of interest to anyone.
- Write some general work updates, to show you what my PhDing actually involves. The day-to-day work is not particularly glamorous, but I like it most of the time. It can be frustrating, but solving problems is also very rewarding. I sometimes spend a whole week troubleshooting, so I am thinking of trying to do those every two weeks - maybe aiming for the weeks when I don't post wildlife photos.