Flying too close to the sun; the PhD as an Icarus adventure.

I have flown too close to the sun.
For 8 years I've been working flat out on creating a phd that has anti-climaxed and now inhabit a space where i am no longer flying, but i havent hit the ground yet either.

Along the way, I have spent part of my time exhausting myself trying to predict, and then control, what markers as well as imagined other readers would think about my work.
Will they get it?
What does it mean to have a thesis that's not in the usual genre of a thesis?
Is it too avant garde: too "Yoda', too Turner-Hospital? Too ANTish? The partial story line suggest not knowing where its going...
These are criticisms i have already experienced.
Is there only one way to write a book?
I can cripple myself thinking what I have written might not work.

At some level, I also know such thinking can make the colourful beige, the vibrant a still pond. At its worst it can lead to a non submission.

I wanted to go as far as I could, but with fears of being burnt, I hold back, playing it safe, just stretching the comfort zone, mine own and that of markers.

Writing a PhD is to write to be judged. Overtly. This writing is not an act of art for art's sake. It's scary. There is lots of potential for being failed. And of failing oneself. All very self-referential in a thesis of change, of risk and failure as much as it is about innovation and new ways of being. An Icarus adventure then;
of flying closer to the sun.

Seth Godin reports, "trying to control what other people think is a trap".
But that's the trappings of academia: of writing and not being found wanting.
How then to avoid writing with a voice that is stifled by what others might think? Is it possible, or even desirable, to avoid being both audience and writer? As noted by Seth Godin, to attempt both is exhausting and counterproductive. I cannot be second guessing all the time what unknown others might think.


"This might not work" is a curse but reframing allows for flight. I've been reminded I never wanted a perfunctory thesis; I did not aspire to writing it in someone else's voice; I did not want beige or mediocre. A PhD is then also a chance to fly.

Writing at 4.00 AM in the morning, unable to sleep, and with habits of writing in every spare moment, I listen to Seth Godin write of his Icarus adventures, of his newest book and see so many parallels. In his writing (and he is a celebrated successful author) he talks of listening to himself, and of forgetting what he had written, not recognizing his own 'voice'. Of listening to himself and crying. I am very humbled to have this person being so open and honest about his own risks, he writes:

"Hearing myself, months later, reading something I didn't remember writing or reading, I shed a few tears. Yes, this is work worth doing."

And I am reminded also of Patti Lather's an ache of wings in troubling how to write.

And am reminded that Flying close to the sun is exactly where i want to be.

Alchemy; from stone soup to making reality

A realistic promise, effective tools, and a bargain.
The minimum of ingredients for organizing without an organisation.
That's Clay Shirky's summation in Here comes ever-body.

Seth Godin extends on this in a blog about making things happen. In part this is a concern for the realistic promise; if you start with too much, all at once, you'll fail. He talks of lining up the dominoes.
...pick out tiny dominos ... And topple them. And they do it again. They do it so often they create noise, momentum and most important, a sense of inevitability. That's how you win.

Such writing is also congruent with what Bruno Latour and John Law write of regarding material semiotics and socio-technical assemblages.

What makes for durability is all in the network.
What makes for failure is also.

Paradoxically success cant occur without failure possibilities being built in.

I dont use the art supplies i got for christmas because i dont want to waste them, i need more freedom to move than one canvas affords me.

Shirky talks of making failure cheap if not free.
For change to be possibile, for creativity to occur, there needs to be a possibility for failure, it helps if the cost of failure is cheap, an advantage he identifies both in the development and use of social networking.

For a community organisation, the means of survival depend on the flexibility afforded by the costs of failure being (financially and time resource) cheap. The durability develops from the promise being feasible, doable with the tools at their disposal, and a bargain where the cost of effort appreciates.

Even where the assemblage or network required may seems precarious such as Youthline which is dependent on philanthropy, volunteerism and secondary to fickle ambient conditions from goodwill to sunshine, there is a durability inherent in being flexible.

Fits well with Beth Kanter's blog for supporting nonprofit organisations with social media. Here's a plug for a low cost, cheap to fail, promise of a better place; Help the world suck less :)

dipping

Holiday reading has included Seth Godin's the dip, the extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick). Not because my job needs this and not because of the PhD either, but it's still a worthwhile read on reviewing where one is at as well as a parallel area of interest in studying change.
I am still finding it a bit hard despite reading the book to know what's a dip vs a cul de sac except when looking back retrospectively. How will i know when persevering is going to do it or not? Its a bit like caving (not that i do this) but the ideas a bit like not throwing good money (or one's time) after bad. There's lost opportunities that might also be considered.
What i have found is some gems relevant to my study of change vis a vis Bruno Latour. While Seth Godin does not mention any philosophers there is a resonance in here. He describes the valley of death where 'the dip is so long and so deep that the nascent competition can't catch up.' Its a bit like cj talking of the habits and ruts made where the walls then get so high that doing anything else becomes harder and harder, you get out of the rut for a moment but are likely to fall back in. Its an easier path where its well trodden. And one that can be deliberately made in shaping th epath so getting out of it is harder still and its here that Seth Godin refers to microsoft where the building of relationships and establishing so many stds makes it essentially inconceivable that word or excell could be challenged. A similar analogy is also provided with ipod anditunes and apple. Instead of resting on laurels a whole raft of essential relationships are formed to make the "network"

Seth Godin describes how its easy to be seduced by the new (just as with the bright and shiny, just coz its new doesn't mean its good) and i like his description of how this leads to addictions and short little spans of attention but he also points out that many people are not led by the new but by the tried and true. Both can be problematic.

And thats where i find myself wondering if I'm in a dip or a cul de sac, again.
I'm left knowing, retrospectively, what I've got myself into. Nonetheless a few more clues provide me a bit more hope in not working myself into corners.

These are timeless themes, when is it useful to change, and when is it not. How might change be made, and what contributes to its fluidity or to its stickiness...And then there is also the effects not only of the dip on the people dipping, but the effects of the people dipping, on the dip... aggressive acts may not only make the people worse, but also the dip.
A very actor-network way of thinking about change.