We will probably have the nagging feeling that we are not doing things right. This is good because confronting our negative feelings and our fear of incompetence can help us begin analysis.

It is unfortunate that some of us worry about losing data but not our thoughts about the data. If we believed in the premises of sociology—that interaction is patterned, that people share meanings, beliefs, and behaviors—then we would trust that the patterns we missed while we were writing will still be there when we return to the field. We are more likely to forget our insights into what we observed.

We cannot achieve immersion without bringing our subjectivity into play.

Instead of doing emotion work, we suggest that fieldworkers become more aware of their feelings and use them as data. As Arlie Hochschild (1983) argued, we can use feelings as clues [...]