Writing a thesis is a lonely task to most people. Even when you have a meaningful partnership with your research supervisor, the ownership production of your thesis is exclusively yours. One way that I found some solace in this lonely task was reading about other researchers experiences, sometimes talking to fellow student researchers who shared the office at the university or listening to seminars in which people also discussed the research effort not only the actual research topic.
Another helpful way to find some company was reading interesting thesis. Finding other people who decided to write their thesis in a creative and original way was always a joy, because made me believe I could do that as well. I remember the impact a certain thesis had on me, when my supervisor showed me that someone had written her thesis using poetry. It was no a research on poetry by the way, the research was actually on palliative care at the end of life for cancer patients. That researcher had managed to bring to light a study on a difficult topic dressed in beautiful words carefully placed as a piece of art that respected the pain of those she studied and still telling about her findings in a rigorous manner.
Since completing my doctorate, I always hoped one day I could go back to my thesis and turn it into a book. Specially because this was ultimately my goal when I started the research itself. I wanted to write an academic thesis, then go back and turn it into something that could be read outside academia and make sense to teachers, parents and young people. Maybe I will still do that one day. But, meanwhile, I decided to simply make it available printed in book format, so if anyone can find inspiration in my attempt to weave narrative, visuals and research into one piece of research, it would be worth it.
Amazon allows authors to publish their work independently, so I thought why not? If no one ever reads it on kindle or acquires a paper copy, it will be still ok. I enjoy having a nicer copy of it myself, instead of the mandatory black book that resides at some shelf at the Hartley library or the pdf on the eprints repository.