Openings

Abstract

When I first started to share my writing, Tomas confessed that he found some of it hard to read. He wished he had said things more eloquently. He was sometimes aware that in putting things into words, he was not completely comfortable with his own position. Thoughtful but, in his own words, “not a theorist,” he worried about sounding naïve if his words were abstracted from the practical contexts through which they arose and were intended to make sense of. Other interviewees, reading their interview transcripts side by side, became newly aware of different perspectives on this work. Even though they expressed discomfort and sometimes harbored doubts about the possible impact on their reputations, the collective thrust of their comments was to urge me further in the direction of “truth.” David responded, having read some early drafts, that the process seemed overly sanitized: “What about all the endless doubts, the anxieties, the sleepless nights?!” he wanted to know. Realizing this more difficult content was missing, I tried to write it in....