Overwhelm, and the way of the Samurai

April 2025

After completing my interviews at the start of March, I was advised by my supervisors to take a couple of weeks off before diving into the task of transcribing and analysing everything, 'everything' being 25 interviews and 13 journals (including my own). I was glad of the chance to switch off for a bit to prepare for this, and took a step back from all things PhD, though, admittedly, I did do some reading, note-taking, and cobbling together a bare-bones structure for a possible paper. 

As the start of April started to loom large, I noticed a feeling of low-key anxiety, possibly induced by my not looking forward to transcribing a mountain of data, and not confident about my ability to analyse it.  I realised that he thought of all that transcription, coding, and analysis was making me feel a bit overwhelmed and anxious. 

At the same time, I’ve been playing Ghost of Tsushima, an epic open world adventure game based around the Mongol uprising on the island of Tsushima in 1274. It’s a bit like Assassins Creed, and though technically an adventure game rather than a RPG, you do inhabit the role of Lord Jin Sakai, the eponymous Ghost and a samurai leading the rebellion against the Mongols to liberate the island. 

I gave it a go for two reasons: it's an open world game, but more importantly, adventure/combat games aren't usually my thing, as they involve using tactics and timing and button combos and stealth and ranged weapons, meaning I can't just build a charisma-free tank as my avatar and mash the same button repeatedly to kill things in two strikes. But having played Avowed earlier this year and realising that I had enjoyed it because I had to use different weapons and combat styles to proceed, I wanted to see if I could get to grips with a game that relies on using a mix of swordplay techniques, stealthy assassination, bow and arrow sniping and QTEs, but learned so much more. It’s taught me how to be a more strategic gamer choosing when to sneak, when to use different sword stances for different foes, parrying, dodging, so I’m getting almost good at the more ‘souls game’ style of combat, and it’s making me proud because I feel like I’m a better gamer. But it’s more than just fighting. There are haikus to write, ancient traditions to learn, mountains to climb Lara Croft-style, and the way of the samurai has helped with the overwhelm I was feeling. 

Here’s an example: at one point the other evening I was feeling a bit down. It was nothing debilitating, but a cause for concern in case it was the start of something bad: bad enough to cause me to lose momentum, interest, and progress in all things PhD-related. One of my strategies when feeling 'flat' like this is to play a video game. Admittedly, this is a bit like putting a plaster on a broken leg, but it’s a quick fix, so I ended the day with a Ghost of Tsushima session. 

At one point I randomly wandered into a village where a NPC greeted Lord Sakai, saw he was tired and unhappy, so suggested he had a bath. Lord Sakai laughed, claiming there was no time in the middle of war to have a bath. The NPC replied that "cleaning the body also cleans the mind". For some reason, this had an affect on me, so I saved my game, took the NPC’s advice, and ran a bath. And it worked! And it was while in the bath I reflected, as Lord Sakai does whenever he finds a healing spa in the game and clambers into it. Why I was feeling sad? Maybe it was because I was scared that my overwhelm would lead to an unfinished PhD? Maybe I needed to break down a daunting amount of transcription, coding, and analysis into manageable chunks?

So I made a plan: to book a desk one day a week at the Doctoral Academy as an official 'PhD Day'. I'm going to start by transcribing all the interview and journal data (and making memos), then coding each transcription. While doing this, I'll refresh my knowledge around all things Charmaz-related, and use YouTube to improve my NVivo knowledge. Then I'll make a second plan around how to organise and carry out the theoretical coding when I get closer to this stage. I have a year to do this, so it will be easy to procrastinate and lose focus, so I need to be VERY self-disciplined. I've been doing this for a couple of weeks now, and I've managed to transcribe my first two interviews while dipping into and reviewing my CGT notes and texts to refresh my data analysis knowledge, and it has been manageable and doable and-importantly- the overwhelm has dissipated and I'm back into the swing of things for now. I'm also very aware that this may/will happen again!

I also want to go to Japan.