Divergence and convergence

This isn't a course related posting as such but more a journal entry to help me grab some "head space". I'm like this on every course I've ever studied, I reach this stage, yet it always takes me by surprise so I'm clearly not learning through experience!

I'm at the point where I've diverged enough - I've been scurrying around collecting acorns of ideas, little germs of inspiration, great handfuls of references and quotes and as the aircraft reaches the top of the climb it has to stall and start letting gravity kick in (mixing metaphors and analogies too!). I should be shifting from collection to storage, from hunting to returning with the spoils, from divergence to convergence but I always find it the trickest thing to judge. I always want to see what is round the next corner or where the next URI leads or what the next chapter of the book tells me when I should really be starting to bring my thoughts together and start consolidating. I need to be more controlled and set myself a time at which I turn back, wherever I am, and head for home.

I also have to get a keyboard for this laptop because the number of times I miss letters or spaces because the keys are too "dead" is driving me nuts!