Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

For some years now I have entertained a notion of writing a thesis around some aspect of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work: this would probably relate to is depiction of dangers to normal order of things but I could never settle on exactly what it would be. This is largely my own fault, my membership of Newcastle's Literary and Philosophical Society has been unused for some time, my own reading has been erattic and recently avoided academic discourses altogether, my writing has suffered terribly at the hands of my by its encouragement of narrow-reading and airline speak and I've fallen away from spending time just thinking, making connections.

This afternoon I picked up my PhD note book, a blue A4 hardback from Staples that when I bought it in 2006 I thought I'd fill it within a few months. It has been untouched since May 2006: two years of relative inactivity while this aim has remained upon my mind. Otherthings were written, read, edited and organised but this central item has been ignored for too long. I have permitted myself every distraction, photography, cooking, TV included but most terrible of all is the nothing, the time spent without meaning or benefit, time wasted: had I used this time as I originally intended I could and should have had my thesis written by now and with luck be using it. 2008 comes around and I have little more than a couple of largely empty notebooks, a fragment of a database and notes scattered around my small library of books.

I need to start somewhere, I'm tempted to write start again, but as I've yet to start properly this seems inappropriate. A nicely acheiveable target such as 30 mins a day 5 days a week or 2500 words a week would be sensible but what is the right amount to start with and more importantly how to ensure I stick to it.

I have wanted to do this since I started in higher education: I now hold my BA and my MA but still want to add PhD and become Dr. The lack of money (or rather the glut of other things to spend it on) has been what has stopped my registering with a university but even without that I should have done more to get myself ready to start and not have this long pause. Today I am restarting my work properly: a little light academic reading, the re-awakening of my notebook and this blog entry. This is afterall what I intended the blog to be for.