Career.
That's our theme for this year with my networking group - Cambridge Women in Construction.

I'm starting by reminding myself what a 'career' even is.  Wikipedia has a wonderful insight into the blurred definitions.  It opens with:

Career is an individual's metaphorical journey through learning, work and other aspects of life.

What I lurve about this, is that it includes learning and 'other aspects of life'.  It emboldens me to think I could see some of my life experiences as part of my overall career, rather than a series of blind alleys or misadventures.

I spent nearly 7 years learning and working in film and tv, some of that time working in architectural practices at the same time to supplement my income.   I even have my own IMDb page !

State of Play was an intense shoot with lots of night filming.  It wasn't particularly challenging from an art director's point of view as it is modern day and most of my other work was period dramas. So many of the cast continued into bigger and brighter productions however, and my reflections are mostly on the social melting pot of a film shoot and how I learned when to stay in the background and when to assert myself.





More recently my learning and other aspects of life have been to do with child development, child psychology and the impact of trauma on, well, everyone.  I hadn't thought of this as part of my career but it might be useful if I did.  While I like a separation between work and home - one gives me a break from the other - like so many people working part-time, I mostly just feel inadequate and behind in both.  I wonder, if one were to look for the cross-overs between the 2 worlds one could see the time spent in one being of useful benefit to the other.

What might those cross-overs be?

• patience, listening, resilience 
• needs of families, asking the difficult questions: although each family is unique there are many considerations when making changes to houses where children live when they, and the family dynamics, will all change immensely in a few short years
• need for space in families - space to be alone, space to be together, space to store stuff

I'm inspired.  I don't know whether there is 'work' that might come from developing these cross-overs but it's interesting to think there might still be something that feeds 'my career' .