Field Notes

I will open a new chapter in my blog: Field notes.

They are part of my UDN – Ulrike’s Daily Notes which I publish more or less frequently on social media. Field notes, however, live exclusively on my blog and Substack.

Field notes are thinking-on-the-move.
They’re not finished writing, not diary, not analysis —
but a bridge between being in the world and later making sense of it.

In plain terms, field notes are:
• what you notice before you explain
• what you record before you judge
• what you catch before it hardens into opinion or story

They come from ethnography, anthropology, journalism, and also from artists and writers who spend time inside situations rather than above them.

Typical field notes can include:
• small, concrete observations (gestures, sounds, rhythms, silences)
• fragments of dialogue (often imperfect, half-heard)
• contradictions (“this is celebrated — but also avoided”)
• bodily reactions (“I felt tense here”; “I relaxed without knowing why”)
• questions without answers
• things that don’t fit the official narrative

What field notes are not:
• not polished stories
• not conclusions
• not moral positions
• not explanations for an audience

They are written for attention, not for performance.
In my kind of work, field notes do something very specific:

They keep me honest before I become articulate.

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More field notes. ********* What is a field note?