Skip to main content

Ph.D journey - each year has been pretty special

I have one year left to finish my ph.d. My topic is on the factors influencing consumers to repair small electrical products. It is linked to this concept called the circular economy. It take a pro-conservation lense as opposed to a pro-growth  focus. but you will soon understand after reading how the three years went that it is all a mirage.

My first year was special. I organised a festival. It was called the Green Festival of Making and Mending, here in Leicester. It was the birth of me. a painful birth but nevertheless worth it. I was trying to manage as best as I could my voluntary activities with university. I was trying to find my voice in this mess called the literature review. It was a struggle but I manage to get there eventually.  I believed that all humans can acquire new skills and flourish by working together. It is through this mean that we can make our time here better and help generations to come to live longer and safer on this planet. I wanted to organise more events to bring people together, more courses, more knowledge transfer, more more more.

My second year was special too. I got married. It was in Paris with the sweetest thing I have ever met. I crawled at first, took few steps, fail few times to walk during this year. Oh man, wedding can be stressful. Yet, how beautiful I was when I walked down that aisle. A beautiful woman and my groom the most beautiful thing I ever seen. I had a voice, I could walk and I felt wonderful. Nothing could possibly stop me on my way. I felt so much love and care from the people around me. It was magical. I never wanted it to stop, we should be together all the time. I wanted to organise more parties and events to feel the love I received once more, more, more, more.

I am now in my third year. It is, it will be special too. I got a news. My father has been diagnosed with lewy body dementia. My world crumbles. I am asking myself: what is my ph.d about again?
I have been told to be strong and the best way I could help is by keeping the machine going, stop feeling sad, be strong, finish your ph.d, get a job, keep going, live more more more and forget about old age, loneliness, illness and death. forget about who you are, a mere mortal that care for those he/she loves, focus on what you can have, a life full of illusions 'money, fame, good reputation, more more more'.
Oh man, what is the purpose of the machine? can we just pause it for second and have a re-think. I just want less of all to be with those I love a little bit more.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What did I learn from analysing my expenditure after a year

In the following blog post, I share the results of two analysis. The first one is an analysis of my spendings by categories after a year, the second is analysis of what I want to achieve by category. The analysis contribute to my main aim which is to achieve financial independence. I am currently trying to pay a debt - 12K for a student loan. To do the first analysis, I downloaded all the statements from my current account in an excel format. I assigned a category to each entry. What are the results? I  allocated 18% of my resources to my loan and the same amount to travel to France and have a couple of trip in the UK. I spent more money on conspicuous consumption than food. I did not have many outings that involved financial expenditure. What am I missing? I haven't got a good idea of what all the cash I have taken out was used for. A part of it must be to commute to work, then it is a mix of food shopping, outings, shopping and more outings. For the second analyy...

Scared to change - the opposite is true part 1 #relationships #opposite #truelove #fear

I fear losing relationships. For those reasons, I can be controlling, manipulating to keep them and/or I can also be deceiving and rejecting people so I do not have to go through the heartache of losing them. It makes me quite indecisive in the way I deal with others. Shall I play along or shall I not? The unfortunate thing is that I also act out of fear with parts of myself. I do not allow myself to evolve because I am scared of what will emerge, I am scared that the real me will create havoc in people lives and make it worse, I am scared of myself. So I choose deliberately to be small, insignificant, ugly, unreliable, poor, untrustworthy, lazy. I do love to be all those things. It is safer for everyone, Yet, weirdly enough, it also makes me unhappy that I am not meeting some of partners expectations. I am losing those relationships, I am closing doors to opportunities. Those who believe that I am so much more than what I chose to be. I create Havoc there. It appears that I am nev...

Emails only on Monday

My new experiment for productivity is to send emails only on the Monday to my collaborators. Today was my first day sending emails to everyone. What can I say, it was intense and at the same time so rewarding. I feel that my list of things to do for the week just reduced dramatically by just dealing with all my planned emails first. Now I can focus on reading, planning and more. The plans for the rest of the week is to read through email 1hour during the day to see if there is anything urgent.Otherwise, they'll be dealt with next week.  What about you? Have you got a productivity hack?