We're preparing to move house, which means our current house is in chaos and we're rethinking our life over and over - both exciting and exhausting. My job is also entering a new phase, and I'll be running my own large project for the first time - again, both exciting and exhausting.
While I've been doing some work on my diploma research project, I'd rather lost my way with the overall picture of my diploma. I'd originally planned to finish the whole thing in two years, but I'm now one year in with not even one finished project...
Fortunately, I had a tutorial two weeks ago with Jo Holleran, my diploma tutor. Jo had very kindly offered me an extra hour of design support for free as a thank you, as she's early in her tutor pathway, and all of our tutorials so far have been observed by another tutor. Not needed, of course, as being observed wasn't really an imposition to me, and it's good to be able to support someone else in that way, but the extra hour was very welcome indeed.
We did the tutorial by Skype, as Jo now lives in France, and while it's not quite the same as being in the same room, it's a perfectly good way of doing things in the circumstances. Jo and I are both quite organised, and pretty much all of my design work so far is electronic, so I'd emailed things in advance for Jo to look at. Once you've ironed out any technological hitches (in my case using a different laptop as my own doesn't appear to have a working microphone), it works well.
We talked about all of my designs individually, and how I was progressing with the diploma overall. I shared my worries (that I'd never finish, and certainly wouldn't finish in two years, that I wasn't 'doing permaculture properly', that some of my designs didn't feel like they should be in my portfolio any more). Jo was reassuring, and reminded me that my initial Action Learning Pathway, which listed my first few planned designs, didn't have to dictate exactly what my portfolio contained. It was quite liberating to realise that I could change my mind about which designs went in and which I left out.
I've got a few decisions to make as a result of our tutorial.
- Do I want to leave my garden design in my portfolio? My original wants and needs have changed a lot now we're moving house, and so my initial design (which never really got finished anyway) is now redundant. Should I start again, or discard the whole thing?
- Should I include my friend's garden in my portfolio? He's letting me grow food in beds there, but I don't have responsibility for the overall maintenance of the garden (which he has no interest in anyway). I've not given this the time and space I would have liked anyway, as my energy is now turned towards moving house.
- Should I include a new overall life design? I'm rethinking things over and over so it seems sensible, but I'm reluctant to start a new design right now.
I'm not going to make those decisions now. As much as I wanted to finish the whole diploma in two years, I'm accepting that this isn't going to happen. I actually feel glad about that now - years ago I was a 'Millennium Volunteer' - a scheme which paid for travel expenses and training in return for 100 hours of volunteering. I did my 100 hours as quickly as I could to get my certificate, and included travel times and meetings in those 100 hours. I got my certificate - but immediately I lost my travel expenses and the general support of the Millenium Volunteer crowd.
Now I know better. Take your time.
My next tutorial is in November (by Skype) and I've committed to do several things by then:
- Update my Action Learning Pathway and send it to Jo
- Regular reflections here every three months on my diploma journey
- Start to compare my existing (half finished) designs to the diploma criteria
- Finish and write up the research project design
Jo suggested that we use my next tutorial for her to give informal feedback on the research project design against the official diploma criteria. This feels manageable - the survey is well underway, we have a list of names for interviews, and we have committed to presenting our findings in a workshop at the convergence in September anyway.
It's looking like we may well have moved house by November (eek!) so I'm reluctant to commit to too many other things before then, but I'll feel more organised if I can pull together what I have done, and get more written up on this website. After all, moving house will give me a whole new set of designs to think about...