Thinking, Breathing, Exploring, Creating

In my PhD research, I marginally investigated the topic of the forest as a place of loss. Enchanted, haunted, feared and attractive, the forest has always embodied a wide range of human emotions and feelings. This is what I wrote in my PhD dissertation and that I might use as a starting point for a new project: "...These places [in the forest] are clearly and intentionally connoted as sacred areas which, before you leave behind the realm of the civilization, introduce and warn you that you are entering the archaic realm that preceded the human world, which was in the darkness before the light (Harrison, 1992, p. 17). And it is still there in the common imagination. The forest is the place of initiations, of the moment that irreversibly changes human destiny; it is the site of obscure rites, whose mystery lies concealed thanks to the complicity of the darkness that reigns there; it is, moreover, the space that surrounds the other world, through which passes the path to tha...

Here I am, at the kitchen table drinking my morning coffee and having a go at this reflective journal. An experiment. To test myself and see if keeping a reflective diary can really benefit my work and give a positive input to my practice. Keeping a reflective blog is what I ask my students to do when developing their research projects. So, why not do it myself at the beginning of a new project? I will ask myself the three main questions that I ask my students to ask themselves to become reflective practitioners: Why do I work in the way I do?  How do I develop solutions to creative problems? How does my work relate to other, current activity in my field? Now that the first post is written, it's just a matter of keeping going...