Lessons learned: including "Who told your to invade my head?"

One breakthrough in my coping mechanism with the symptoms (people could read my mind and I could sense their presence etc....)--> "I am not responsible for my psychotic symptoms."  and "Who told your to invade my head without permission?"

Unfortunately, there is no standard interventions for my own symptoms.  Some might work for a while and, all of a sudden, doesn't work.  My coping so far... a constant processing of finding out the things that might work.

Taking symptoms such as people could read my mind and hear my thought thing...

You could tell yourself that... it is but your symptoms.  Yet, good luck with that... if you could win it over this way, they wouldn't have been coined as pathological.

If you don't give a bag of beans about how others feel, you could simply run your mouth on and on at them "unauthorized intruders in your head."  End results, other people might find it difficult to get your attention and find your head all flaky...  This might be the same reason why, sometimes on the street, you hear people all of a sudden yelling at you for no good reason.

Yesterday, for instance, as I was walking down Broadway, this woman came towards me and yelled... "Keep on playing your game!!"

I went... "8-O you could see them people accessing my head without authorizations and you are actually speaking to them?"  (So speak for the synergistic effect of putting two together... 8-O lol sigh)

At the same time, others might feel bad when not-so-nice thoughts would come into their head.  They might feel bad that the not-so-nice thoughts might be known by other people and hurt their feelings.

This is one of my worst enemy... For the longest time, I felt bad when not so nice thoughts would emerge and might hurt the receivers' feelings.... and your know your condition is going down south when it goes from singular to plural because, when you start to feel the presence and hear the voices of many people, your head starts to reenact things like the three kingdoms... 8-O lol sigh

And this is the time when you have your meds up... like what I have to do.. with the minor inconveniences I have to face when going to bed... In addition to them symptoms who have a bad habit of showing up left and right in all forms while you let go of your cognitive control when trying to fall asleep, extremely dry mouth, the sensation of the esophagus getting all tightened up and the body jerking up and down in bed as if a life fish out of water on a chopping board....

Life used to be much easier... you pop the meds, it knocks you down and put your asleep.  The worst thing could happen is for you to feel all dumb all days... none of them physical kinda stuffs... sigh

Then, the light ball went off earlier today and I realized that one way of responding to these kind of incidence is to say to myself...

"I have no control over my symptoms otherwise they will not be called pathological symptoms.  In addition, my head is my head and who the hell are you to intrude my private thoughts... pathological or not.  That should teach you a lesson being beaten up by my disordered thoughts left and right."

(Remember... the reason why symptoms are symptoms is because of the intrinsic bias patients have towards the disordered thinking.)

Then I thought of what that strange doctor of mine said to my over 2 years ago...

"放下" or, in English, "Let go."

I could not understand what exactly I have to put down and, today, I bet, the doctor might have no idea either except for he simply knows that is what I have to do.

Since then, I have learned to let go of many things... although I am still not quite sure what I have to learn to let go.

The most recent thing that I learned to let go is to let go of the control over my symptoms... as mentioned in the previous part of the writing.  I have to learn to let the symptoms to simply be symptoms while finding the least stressful way of reacting to them.  (And, of course, it is easier to say than to do... react not...)

In addition, in my previous life, people mostly could not tell that there is anything not so normal about me... until the point of the accident when I fell free from a collapsing chair in sitting position.

From then on... till today... it is just a normal part of my life to walk abnormal and go into abnormal states.  At this point, when it occurs... whether it is my limping around... sleep walking... experiencing excruciating pains migrating through my body as I take my walk ... etc... It is just the way it is so let it be.  And, hopefully, if I let it run through... I will be able to walk out of it.... and luckily, I have been able to walk in and out of strange states so far....

Essentially, I am regressing back to the mean and simply need to fill the quota.... Nowadays, I am having a paradigm shift in my MO... pretending no more... trying no more to act like them people-- normal... though I still do have my boundary and though I have no idea what it really means to act normal. 8-O  Somehow, something tells me that this is what it takes... I simply have to do it and get it over with.

Of course, God knows whether any of these thoughts are intuition or delusions...  Everything shifts and morphs all the time...  Along this line of thinking... I have given up trying to figure out how sane or insane I might be.  Somehow... no need no more.... unless... insufficient cognitive capacity.  In addition, the want to figure it out make you think and convoluted thinking drive you even nuttier.

In addition, this idea just came to me yesterday.... what about creative writing? 8-O

Symptoms

Came across the following table in a paper....  Following are the current names of psychotic symptoms.  The texts in purple are the symptoms I have to cope with on a daily basis...  As I was going through the list, I realize... oops... 100% hit... shxt... pretty bad... or not good.... 8-O lol sigh

Current names of symptoms	Descriptions
Acoustico-verbal hallucinations	Voices heard arguing or commenting on patient's actions.
Audible thoughts	Patient’s own thoughts heard by him/herself.
Thought broadcasting	Patient’s thought are passively diffused to other people.
Thought insertion	Other people intrude their thoughts upon the patient.
Thought withdrawal	Other people actively take patient’s thoughts in his/her mind.
Made affect and feelings	Experience of influences playing on patient’s sensations.
Somatic passivity, delusions of influence, alien control	Experience of influences playing on patient’s actions.
Delusional perception	Patient’s experience of a peculiar, intense, convincing experience not shared by other people.

Learning to read

It seems like every time I try to read adult kind of stuffs (I can read children's book without words well), my body and head gets into trouble and it would take forever, such as days, for me to recover.

The major task I am trying to do today and the days to come is to learn to read and to find ways to minimize its damages.  8-O

One plausible principle that might be useful is un-attention-un-deficit and one adaptive strategy I have come up with is to do something else distracting such as knitting while trying to read.

At the same time, reading is not the only thing that drives mes crazy.

It just came to my attention last week when trying to help this friend preparing her dataset to be analyzed.... my psychotic symptoms went for a field trip and my body went down south as well.

When the dasein moment of them fearful delusions emerged when I was doing coding or data analysis, I actually had to outsource my delusional beliefs to calm them dasien down so that I could push the thing through...  Interestingly, after I decided to leave it to my delusional protective figure in my imaginary world to help taking care of my delusional moments of extreme fear, them dasein sort of went away leaving more manageable symptoms floating around... 8-O  lol sigh

What I mean by the dasein moment... example... someone I care or not is going to die or hurt really bad... as I have described too many a time.

Some other commonly observed indicators... yawning, tearing, really deep breathing as if there is old air that needed to come out of my chest, mouth and eyes....

I don't know how them experts might classify this kind of condition.

Not my issue anyways...

Time to get back to my unknitting...

At the same time, something tells me.. incidences are but peripheral and if it were not one incidence, it would always be another....

It is just part of the  process... and that is just the way it is.

I won't be stuck in this state forever... in the meanwhile, the question... How long is it going to take before I finally could grow out of this strange form of disability?  I suspect... the same answer my doctor in Taiwan gave me when I asked him... "When could I walk again?"

"Depending on you."

Delusional or not?  Well... at least this is a belief I can manage....

Quote from House

Came across this really nice quote from House... by this presumably normal guy...

Something like...

"How can something so real be not true?"

Silently Disabled

Revisited the concept of invisible disability again.

Silently Disabled: The everyday struggles of those with invisible disabilities | The Michigan Daily

For ordinary people, disability is an abstract concept.  A concept is something that comes into your head and goes away when out of sight, out of mind.

For people living with non-progressive disability, disability is a way of life that comes with a whole bundle of packages.

In addition, even you are disabled in your own way, sometimes your understanding of others could only go so far because... I can only draw references about your plight from my own experiences.  The experiences I have no idea about which I have been taught to be awful... all that I could do is to assign an empty awful tag and act accordingly.  For instance, I don't know what is RSD but since the lady seems to suffer a lot based on her report, it's gotta be awful.  However, this void tag and response could only go so far because, in split second, the label itself turn void and you forget what the label might entail.  At the same time, when she started to talk about pain and mobility issues... that I can connect with and now there comes a more meaningful sense of awfulness.

Also, after a certain point and million a time, you stop trying to explain because all starts to sound like simply an excuse to yourself.

The adjustment to disability itself is a process developing along with the actions and reactions in time and the context provided.

A common theme emerging.... from comparisons between incidence and indicators to indicators

Can't quite name the core yet though all others seem to interlinked to the core.

Yet, I have the feeling... almost time to see the regression line... if you know what I mean...

At the same time, what would be the implication of measurement and evaluation here?  A gateway towards compassion?  (A category might or might not link to the core.. pondering)

Another interesting thought... if I have so much problems doing thing as a result of my problems, why don't I simply stop trying?  (I didn't just think of that... 8-O lol)

A final note about my postings

Again, 99% of the times I have no idea what the heck it is in my head and that is coming out of my mouth, since I have been trained to not give a rat's ass about the products of my existence, my suggestion would be for readers to not quite care about my blah blah blah for fear of "the shining" effect.   8-O lol 8-X

Sort of like what they say about emerging and forcing...

Also kinda like the constant updating process of this post... what exactly are my thoughts trying to convey?  What do I care if not how could I care?  For... in time, it shall emerge... I guess? 8-O

What would be interesting to see though is... if theory is a process... what's your theorizing process?

Allergy?

I have been intending to make this posting for weeks if not months.... something told me it was not yet time until now.

I have been having this feeling and talking to some of my friends about this thing I might call allergy.

It is as if I have become allergic to pursuits involving my head.... at least...

Every time I try to read and try to do the work necessary to complete my academic assignments, my psychotic symptoms go on a field trip and I feel physically no good....

Worst of all, the things I try to read and learn about become my delusions and hallucinations.

The only thing I could do, in addition to take my meds, is to do nothing, to do my sleep-walking or do my swinging exercise..  with the purpose of these brainless activity.... seemingly... to erase it all which eventually would lead to the "waking up" moments.... (a never-ending theme nowadays.)

If I try to do "too much," my body and mind would take the whole day or two to take me off such tasks....

There would be no point to fight it since there ain't no nothing you could do to fight it....

This is something nobody, I guess, could understand since I can't understand either myself....

How do I know these are delusions but not simply some non-delusional beliefs?

I intend not to persuade anyone about insanity but... following would be the example...

I have been reading or try to read about the grounded theory method.

There has been much phenomena emerged associated to what I learned about it...

One night, after I read this article, I decided to make some smart ass comments and post it in this blog....

"An interesting theory proposed by Stern (1994) about the divorce of the parents for Grounded theory.  According to Stern, the crux of the divorce might have resided in their MO....

“I think, that Strauss, as he examines the data, he stops at each word to ask, “What if?” Glaser keeps his attention focused on the data and asks, “What do we have here? Straus brings to bear every possible contingency that could relate to the data, whether it appears in the data or not. Glaser focused his attention on the data to allow the data to tell their own story.” (P. 220)

.... no wonder I have split-heads.... 8-O lol

Be serious... how do you reconcile the differences?  That would be the question...."

I made this post on December 30th. Right after I publish this post, I had this sense of fear... this feeling that somebody is unhappy.

Since I read from somewhere that Strauss has passed away in, I thought, 1996, I could not help but think that it was Strauss that was upset about my making it something so light.

Thereafter, I felt Strauss's "presence" and "guidance." Strauss told me to focus on the first chapter of the book "The Discovery of Grounded Theory for instance."

When taking my daily sleep-walking kind of walk, grounded theory related contents also came looping around like broken record in my head.... For instance.... I walked on and on with "emerging versus forcing" in my head... for many a block if not many a mile...

And, every time when I try to push something through... "Emerging... emerging......."

At the same time, there have even been times when I was instructed to stop reading and to start doing other brainless activities because "you have to take care of your health."

One night, as I was doing my swinging exercise in front of TV, I felt the presence of Strauss moving away... Apparently, the intensive mentoring program had ended and all that he has to do now is to pop in at times to do some advisement. 8-O lol sigh

Was talking to my friend about it earlier today and I said...

"I heard of "the neighbor's dog made me do it." Yet, in this case, it is the methodologist himself's spirit led me through it." 8-O lol sigh

These are but some of the examples that lead me to think once in a while...

Why is it for the others... things... so easy?

Why can't I simply get some writing done without all these strange things?

Then, as I was typing out the above qestions...

In my head.... "Emerging...."

And, en route to this posting through the past few months… in addition to all of the above and more… I stopped by sleep walking… swinging… origami tessellation… knitting… and so on to keep myself in one piece during the emerging process….

Flattering

Was hanging out with this good old friend of mine this afternoon...

One flattering comment he made...

"You are the sanest person I have known.  This possible has to do with the fact that you know you are insane."

Ya.  The good thing about these good friends of mine is that... well, for them, I just just who I am.  8-O lol

I sincerely thanked him for this flattering comment.

At the same time, the benefit of being insane is there is no need to doubt your own sanity because.... insanity... that's a given... so get on with it.  8-O lol

Or like...

"You crazy?  I am not gonna waste my time and energy defending my insanity." 8-O lol

Ratprincess lost

My necklace broke and I lost my pure gold ratprincess pendent today.

Now I feel depreciated.

And, man, that ratprincess has been with me for over a decade if not two.

At the same time, I think I dropped my pendents when I went to the washroom in a clothing store while waiting.

This lady when came out from the toilet was staring at me in a strange way... it was not when I got into the toilet did I realised that the neclace was broken...

When I came right back out, one pendent was on the floor and the gold one was no place to be found.

Someone I had the feeling that it was that lady who knew it was me who lost it and took it anyway.  If it were true, that wouldn't be too nice and wouldn't be good karma either.

Since it was pure gold, it might worth a bit more than a few dimes...

Just in case....

That round and gold pendent with a rat on it has gone through a whole lot of different times with me... Shall anyone find it and decide to keep it... you might wanna do some energy work on it.... because... God knows what has gone alone with it.... 8-O oops...

Positive

Haven't posted here for a while because I decide to keep this phase of my mumble jumble to myself given that... after all these years.... same old same old...

Still I can't defy this feeling that... somebody reading my internal journaling posted in my private blog.

Still positive....

At the same time, anyone ever heard anything about my internal dialog?  Please post a comment....

(At the sound of the above question... OMG... Jesus Chris... )

A quote on meaning

Nice quote about Blumer's symbolic interactionism... something I haven't came across since 1997... I think... (OMG... I am getting old... 8-O lol 8-X)

"Objects do not have any intrinsic meaning- that meaning is conferred on them by us- and that different people, and the same person at different times, may confer different meanings on the same object." (Hammersley, 1989, p. 135)

Even better... in Blumer's own words:

“Human beings act toward things based on the meanings that the things have for them; the meanings of such things is derived from the social interaction that individual has with his fellows; and meanings are handled in, and modified through an interpretive process and by the person dealing with the things they counter.” (Blumer, 1969).

Hammersley, M. (1989). The Dilemma of Qualitative Method: Herbert Blumer and the Chicago Tradition. . London, New York.: Routledge.

Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: perspective and method Los, Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

Post for the New Year's eve

On my way home from my daily walk, as I was yawning involuntarily in my sleep walking state down Broadway, NYC, I heard this guy passing me by said...  "Disgusting."

I kept walking on and let my body finish up with the yawning routing... naming... mouth opening and closing.... and so on...

And, I let these words out simply out of my mouth without disturbing anyone... hopefully... "You are disgusting."

And... move further on.

Such captures some essential lessons learned this year.

I would have stopped right here except for something tells me to say more.... therefore, I decided to copy the following from my internal journal posted 2 days ago.

This has been a strange year in the sense that....

I spent hundreds of hours sleep walking.... mostly on Broadway.... in and out of psychotic episode grade of sleep walking... hundreds and a mile... in between... yawning, tearing.... trying to keep my eyes not closing.... floating around in the sea of hallucinations and delusions.... as well as the never-ending waking-up moments.  (Thank God. 8-O)

I also spent hundreds if not thousands of hours... swinging... to make sure the existence that is in gazillion a piece not breaking apart.

In addition, it had come to my realisation that... what I usually thought as intuition might be more than what is commonly considered as intuition.....

So I have often said... my intuition blah blah blah... therefore I blah blah blah... to follow my intuition.

Then, there were times when I tried to follow the intuition not (to defy? 8-O lol sh....)... thinking to myself... I could plow it through... like what I used to be able to... and, I realised... I simply could defy the force what I thought as intuition not.



Sort of like... da illusion of control... spoken of by da turtle... 8-O lol

Get to the core now.... to link all other categories together... simple or simply love.



Happy New Year and a happier New Year!

凡人歌

Interesting concept... people have 雜念.... ummmm... it is normal....

凡人歌 李宗盛

你我皆凡人 生在人世間
終日奔波苦 一刻不得閒
(你)既然不是仙 難免有雜念
道義放兩旁(把)利字擺中間
多少男子漢一怒為紅顏多少同林鳥已成(了)分飛燕
人生何其短何必苦苦戀
愛人不見了向誰去喊冤問
你何時曾看見這世界為了人們改變有了
夢寐以求的容顏是否就算是擁有春天

A place in the Sun

Came across this fine song as I stopped by Starbucks during my walk in the sun...

A place in the sun-- Stevie Wonder



Like a long lonely stream
I keep runnin' towards a dream
Movin' on, movin' on
Like a branch on a tree
I keep reachin' to be free
Movin' on, movin' on

'Cause there's a place in the sun
Where there's hope for ev'ryone
Where my poor restless heart's gotta run
There's a place in the sun
And before my life is done
Got to find me a place in the sun

Like an old dusty road
I get weary from the load
Movin' on, movin' on
Like this tired troubled earth
I've been rollin' since my birth
Movin' on, movin' on

There's a place in the sun
Where there's hope for ev'ryone
Where my poor restless heart's gotta run
There's a place in the sun
And before my life is done
Got to find me a place in the sun

You know when times are bad
And you're feeling sad
I want you to always remember

Yes, there's a place in the sun
Where there's hope for ev'ryone
Where my poor restless heart's gotta run
There's a place in the sun
Where there's hope for ev'ryone
Where my poor restless heart's gotta run
There's a place in the sun
Where there's hope for ev'ryone...

Not again

It feels like I am getting born everyday.

Anyways, 7:15 AM Taiwan time or 6:15 PM New York time, I was born again... What a asynchronous lifestyle! 8-O lol

Today also is my 2.5 years old birthday into my physically disabled life.  What a synchronous and asynchronous lifestyle! 8-O lol

In addition, today marked the day I see a paycheck deposited into my bank account since my I-20 expired on May 15th because the reinstatement notice finally arrived the day after I heard the sad news about the passing of my dear uncle.  ;-(

I finally can get pay now even though my bosses were kind enough to put up with having me hanging around like them little friends who are driving everyone up the wall in the office these days all these times. 8-O lol

The reinstatement only gives me up to May to finish things up and it gives me more time to finish things up.

The lesson learned... today...

Gratitude makes you happy and brings forth the sunny side of life even when it might feel as if the whole world is coming down... including your ceiling....

It is because, when you have gratitude, it means something good has been done for you... even though sometimes you do want to use your stick to beat people up really good when they get on your other side.... 8-O lol

罪過罪過善栽善栽... 8-O lol

T'is the nature of being human...

Among many things and people I am grateful about this year if not this life so far is that... I thank the opportunity I have been given to continue to "work."  Something tells me that I might have gone back and out of my bird nest if I had sat there everything-less and drowning myself in sentiments of blah blah blah while waiting for the decision on my reinstatement application to arrive, provided God knows what the outcome might be.

I am still psychotic but I am on 150-200 mg Seroquel while still kicking at large and I had never stop living for a moment( (Thank God) ... other than them never-ending waking up moments...

In any case, focus on live a happy life regardless!  A suggestion I could offer to whoever might want a suggestion...

Your choices are now permanent

I, unofficially speaking, have more than one mafia war account... for fear that if one accounts gets closed, I have other accounts to work with to see what it might be like towards the end of the journey.

Funny enough, some time after I created the second account, my dominant account became disabled... and it remained disabled since....

That rain-day account I created eventually surpassed the growing speed of the dominant account... Today, it is the main account....

So, I finally get to finish the Third Tier of Episode 6 "Pakhan" in Moscow today...

The day when I was not yet awake while starting to feel regretful about not having gotten up early enough to catch the free shuttle to see my shrink... and heard my voice said..."If you push harder, you will break."

Not you "might" break.  No uncertainty here but you "will" break. Psychotic symptoms or not... scary enough... especially when I am all broken and still try to find way to patch myself up... 8-O 8-X lol sigh

The day when my voice force me further to reexamine my life... and the prices...

I knew it is time to really put down and let go da thing relating to academia.... And, apparently, there is still this thought in the back of my head saying... maybe one day, after I retire from something else, I will try out academia...

There might be other people both mentally and physically disabled like me and who could continue to pursuit a career as such.

Good luck to you and take care of your health and life. Of course, best wishes to you non-disabled as well... ya... non-discriminating.... 8-O lol

I have now made a conscious choice... weighting all things... and decided to preserve myself for a wonderful life ahead and it ain't like my non-existence in academia would mean a ding to no nothing and nobody.  It seems like IT or number-related jobs are best for me.  Running a craft shop would be nice except for I need to first really win my mega-million... 8-O lol

It is not like I have come to this conclusion simply because I am disabled in the head and in the body.... Like... OMG... I am too constrained by my disabilities such as my head status to do it.

Rather, it is... based on my estimation and since the past seems to have some pretty good predictibility on the future... what outweigh what and what is the cost-benefit ratio?

Do I want to go against the odds if not Gods regardless... perpetuating the modus operandi of my past life... which seems to have led to the shattering of my existence bottom up... literally... because I want to prove that I can do it, whatever it is?

Not saying anyone should simply decide to not pursue no nothing without any effort because I did conduct my dissertation experiment all the way into the psychiatric ward and came out jumping right back into it and I have not stopped.  And, I did work and study while living with them ups and downs of my mental health conditions all the way and all those years till I deposited my dissertation and got that doctoral degree.  In other words, don't let nobody tell you that because you are psychotic... you can't get things done... provided you get your jobs done (oops... am I reacting to something? Imaginary or not? 8-O lol).

Yet, do I want to, above and beyond the acceptance of my updated self-concept, recalibrate for a "nicer" path (see page 154 about the process of coming back again in Strauss and Corbin (1990) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques.)? (love the word nicer... 8-O lol)

I have no regret about my life so far other than not making big money to take my parents for trips... it is just, at times, one just has to recalibrate.

Then, upon the completion of da Pakhan job, I saw this message...

Your choices are now permanent... 8-O lol

Speaking of synchronicity.... and no wonder I am delusional... 8-O lol

And, only hope this note will reach someone... positive way.

Now I can shut up again for a while.

Normal

Told the shrink about voices and presence of my uncles ...

So he said...

You know normal people could also experience it during the grieving process.

On a second thought, I do remember two guys told me that they could hear their fathers voices and sense their presence... including someone who is a physicist...

8-O

Then, I had this thought... if our ancestors still come over and check on us once in a while.... the empty spaces surrounding us all might actually be not so empty and might actually be really busy... then... 8-O

Etiology and its implications: Why I went nuts

Sometimes I think the reason why I went nuts might have to do with the fact that...

I tried to hold back judgment on people because I understood blah blah blah blah blah blah...

Somehow I think the whole holding judgment and being understanding thing might have used up all my available memory and caused the system to constantly hang or crash.  8-O

One thing I have been trying to learn in this new life is to be "normal" or "human"... to reclaim the rights to make judgments about people's deeds and speech as per my "perception" and to authorise myself to feel pissed off...

For instance, one thing that really pisses me off is to see how evil people could be to use my disability as a weapon against me.

I am not BS-ing you that I don't have an evil side since I have this belief that everyone has an evil side except for one might just not want to face it. (see 墨子)

Since God forbids me from cursing people as per my delusional thoughts...

My evil side is that... the next time somebody pisses me off by using my disabilities (e.g, physical) as a weapon against me, I am gonna beat them up good with my cane 8-O to teach them a lesson on what it means to be like me to be in a "extended partial recovery course." (see page 154 about the process of coming back in Strauss and Corbin (1990) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques.) (Oops... a bit too violent... no good modeling to children... not to mention I can't even kill a bug  without squinting or move my own butts fast enough... sigh...  Guess this is the reason why they took my cane away and gave me a walker instead in the cuckoo cuckoo's nest. 8-O lol)

zen moment... zen moment ... God I have sinned... 8-O

Apparently, I am gradually moving into a state of anger... rather than simply low and depressed....

And, of course, if you say... this chick got issues...

No truer words... my head splits and my body broken... etc...

There ain't no doubts that I've got issues... so many that you don't wanna know... 8-O lol sigh

And, I got an issue with being disabled?  Which part of my English don't you understand?  8-O lol sigh

Quotes from Coding in Grounded Theory Practice

Charmaz, Kathy (1999). Constructing grounded theory: a practical guide through qualitative analysis.

Quotes from Chapter 3: Coding in Grounded Theory Practice

Check the following link for an alternative version of the paper
http://www.colorado.edu/ibs/pb/thornberry/socy5031/pdfs/CharmazGroundedtheory.pdf

Dey (1999): 

"There is a difference between an open mind and an empty head."

Verbatim of an individual with Lupus erythematosus:

"If you have lupus, I mean one day it's my liver; one day it's my joints' one day it's my head, and it's like people really think you're a hypochondriac if you keep complaining about different ailments... It's like you don't want to say anything because people are going to start thinking, you know, 'God, don't go near her, all she is-is complaining about this.' And I think that's why I never say anything because I feel like everything I have is related one way or another to the lupus but most of the people don't know I have lupus, and even those that do are not going to believe that ten different ailments are the same thing."  Page 52

A quote from Charmaz, 1991:

"A desire to recapture the past reflects yearning for a lost self.  That yearning results from grieving for accumulated losses from illness.  Here, the person defines losses and acknowledges illness.  Though she writes that she learned to live moment by moment after her stroke, poet May Sarton simultaneously longed for her past self: "Now I am frightfully lonely because I am not my self.  I can't see a fried for over a half-hour without feeling as though my mind were draining away like air rushing from a balloon'. (1988, P. 18)

The sorrow for a past self increase when people believe that they might not reclaim it.  Even after trying to wait out illness or treatment, regaining the past self and recapturing the past may remain elusive.  Sarton suggests this elusiveness when she writes that 'to manage such a passive waiting life for so many months I have had to bury my real self-and now realize that bringing back that real self is going to be even more difficult than it was to bury it'. (1988, p. 78)

A quote about preconceived notions (P. 68):

"You cannot assume what is in someone's mind-particularly if he or she does not tell you."

"If you reframe participants' statements to fit a language of intention, you are forcing the data into preconceived categories-- yours, not theirs."

"A fine line exists between interpreting data and imposing a preexisting frame on it."

Our little friend

An imaginary portrait of our little friend... 8-O 8-X lol

March of penguins

Watching march of penguins while eating...

So narrated Morgan Freeman...

"one way or another, they all find the one they were looking for."

With the camera zooming in to two penguins together...

So I thought....

How do they find the one when they all look the same?

Then, I thought again...

Maybe that's the same way the penguins think when they see human...

How do they find the one when they all look the same?

So I spent the rest of the movie trying to sort through the unopened mail.... 8-O

Two thoughts came to my mind...

First, how did the mama penguin find the husband and the chick after they came back from the sea since... they all look the same to me...

Second, them chicks are so cute... if only I were a penguin... but no... their life seems to be too tough.... the cold and the marches....