Pre-PhD Workbook 1: This is me leaving a trail
A beginning, but not the start.
This post is where I begin tracking the work — not after it’s formed, but while it’s still circling. A way to mark what’s moving before it makes sense. A breadcrumb. A checkpoint. A quiet way to say: I was here. Something mattered.
I keep thinking I should wait until I know what this is before I start writing. But that’s never really worked for me. If I wait for clarity, I’ll just keep circling the same thoughts without realising I’ve already passed them three times.
So I’m starting here.
This isn’t the warm-up or the overflow. It’s part of how I hold the work. The thinking doesn’t happen first and then get written down neatly afterward. This is the thinking. Or at least the part where I start to notice it taking shape. The way it shows up isn’t tidy. It doesn’t arrive as full arguments or clean conclusions. It comes in fragments. Images. A feeling in my chest. A sentence that sounds right before I know what it means. I need somewhere to catch those things while they’re still forming. Otherwise I miss them.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the shape of thought. How it moves before it makes sense. Before it has form. There’s this feeling — not even an idea yet — just something low and constant. A pressure, maybe. A hum. That’s what this space is for. The hum before the thing. The sound before the light.
I’m not trying to be poetic about that. I mean it literally. Thought, feeling, direction — it all starts as vibration. As something I can’t quite name yet. If I treat that as nothing, I miss the moment it starts to form. This is my way of trying to stay close to it.
I don’t think in neat progressions. It’s loops. Repeats. A bit obsessive, sometimes. I can’t always see where a thought begins or ends. But if I leave a trail — a sentence, a post, a scrap of something, maybe I can find it again. And eventually, I’ll see the pattern. Maybe not until much later, but still.
That’s what this is. A way to leave a trail. Not a map, not a finished route — just something to follow when I forget how I got here. Something to help me notice when I’ve come back to the same point again, but with slightly different eyes. I’m not trying to draw conclusions. I just don’t want to lose the thread. If I leave enough markers behind me, I can start to see the pattern.
So this is the first one. Not because I’ve figured anything out, but because I need somewhere to start. A place to say: I was here. This mattered. Something was forming.
That’s enough for now.