I’ve been thinking a lot about study again. The other day I accepted I’m not really well enough to study right now, and probably won’t be for a while, and I thought that I should probably get in touch with the American Australian Association and let them know and maybe give up my scholarship. In some weird way I think giving up made me feel more hopeful about things, and sort of allowed me to reassess what I want from the work I produce, and what I want it to be, and how to get there.

I had a big chat with a friend about how I think research about culture and society and people is so inaccessible a lot of the time, and I don’t understand why it needs to be that way. I think that research about people should be available and accessible to the people it’s about. Otherwise what’s the point in doing it?

I told her about my interest in the intersections of technology, society, self, culture, and art, and how I want to disrupt traditional research by looking at these different spheres through different lenses and integrating them somehow. Like interviewing people who work in tech and producing a non-fiction piece from those interviews, then writing a story from that, and making a collage, a video, a painting. How many ways can I approach this knowledge? What can I learn from these different ways of making meaning?

We talked about how anthropology (specifically ethnography) seems like a good fit for me in terms of equipping me with the skills and theoretical background I need to do the kind of work I want to do.

I sat with that for a bit. And then I started looking up courses. ANU has pretty much the only one of interest to me in Australia. And then I came full-circle back to Experimental Humanities at NYU. I love the program. I already have a scholarship that will fund one year of living in the US. Why don’t I seriously consider this program as an option?

I started an application before—a couple of months ago, maybe. I stopped half-way through because I got stumped on the writing sample. I felt (feel) like I don’t have anything suitable and I don’t know what I would want them to read anyway. A paper? My Honours story?

And just now I thought, well why don’t I write about the things I want to study, the issues I have with academia, all these thoughts that have been swirling around my head, and post it on my blog? They’re keen on non-traditional research. I could even bring my illness into it if I wanted to, include some video clips of me reading in bed if I wanted to. Paint a picture of the chronically ill person as researcher. Hello! I am still here! I have value! Please don’t leave me behind.

I think of it as a kind of meta-research, I guess. Take my Honours thesis. I wrote a story, and I wrote an essay situating that story in a context. Why art and exegesis? Why not art as exegesis? Why is that any less valid as a form of knowledge-making? It’s certainly much more accessible.

I keep a notebook for research, even though I’m no longer associated with a university. At the end I build a glossary. One day, after adding something like eight new words to the glossary, none of which I could really understand or make stick in my brain, I relabelled the glossary ‘esoteric wank’. Maybe I’m just dumb or under-educated, I don’t know. Maybe a masters will help and I can go back to ‘glossary’.

I’ve started making youtube videos. Or, a youtube video. I’ve only done one. It’s low quality, not very good. In it, I partially bleach my hair. The memory card fills up before I can finish the job. There’s a picture of my cat at the end. I don’t mention my illness. How does this fit into my process? Does it have to?

I should blog more. But I’m tired.