Space to play

This is a great book to help you think through your relationship with your research work and overcome some challenges.

Started reading this and was soon absorbed in a whole experience of understanding the relationship to my work from a new perspective. Keeping it short, it was about surrendering your work so the work is redeemed into its own otherness, into itself from the researcher, only after the researcher has let go of her claims on the work.

He calls this the unfinished business in the soul of the work. He goes on to talk about the rhythmic tides that flow between the ego of the researcher and the soul of the work and suggests that this rhythmic process is a kind of play and the space between the researcher and the work is therefore a space of play.

He says that re-search that keeps soul in mind needs to create space that acknowledges the tension between the said and unsaid, a space that ensures the unsaid is not forgotten or left behind and invites a way of holding on to work by letting go of it, that attends to the unfinished business in the soul of the work and finally offers a way of differentiating the researcher's complex ties to the work from that of the unfinished business in the work itself.

Really, really interesting reading!