Study Bottleneck

Only God knows what google searches that title will bring here. Anyway, as part of my lent reading, I've been plowing through John Henry Newman sermons. As much as there is the devotional aspect to the reading, it often pertains to the dissertation. Well, I am currently reading a sermon of his in his Plain and Parochial Sermons, Volume 4 "The Mysteriousness of our Present Being." I started this sermon on Wednesday or Thursday of last week and just finally got through. Why? It was a gold mine for my work. I kept runing into quote after quote after quote, which then forced me to open up the files and insert, rearrange and restructure, basically the whole nine yards. Needless to say, it create a huge bottleneck in my reading plans.

It is exciting, though, because the whole project is based on a hunch. It is based on some pretty good evidence, but there's nothing like seeing things line up like you hoped.

Because of past abuses (800 page dissertations), these dissertations are now supposed to be no longer than 250-350 words. Say what you have to say and get out. The problem, though, with doing comparisons is that these projects become unwieldy and out of hand and 450 pages into it, you are desparately searching for a way to end gracefully. I have no hope of a 250 pages and out, my notes and quptes have already exceeded that. I'm worried about 400+ and counting. But it's all good stuff. You have enjoy the topic and Newman is fascinating. The good thing for me is that I have loafed around for 2/3 years, during which i was doing some serious work on the idea, but also taking breaks from it, so now I'm ready to roll. so bring on the bottlenecks.