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' .

Woops - that must have been 2018

Aha - a whole year and no blog post...yet, I achieved so much.

Let's see:

• Planning permissions x 2 in the Cambridge City Centre Conservation Area
• Planning permission for another new house in North Cambridge and very nearly a second, we are just negotiating on amenity space.
• Completion of a whole house refurbishment and loft conversion
• Near completion of an extension to 18th century listed cottage
• Coordination and start of construction of city centre refurbishment and extension
• A couple of design schemes and another one pending

All eclipsed by the personal achievement of an extension to our own home and the reality of living through the build rather than being able to drop in and out.

Separate to all that qualifies as 'work', I also kept up the CWIC group which now has a lovely core group of regulars - we even managed a corporate style trip to Brands Hatch which was thrilling!

Not to mention cementing some friendships through some difficult times, mine and theirs, shepherding a volatile son from primary school to secondary school and mastering a 'downward dog' .

And the plan for 2019?

• honing my expertise in domestic architecture
• surfing the Brexit waves
• bringing CWIC into the light
• guiding another child into secondary school
• running a 10k

Happy New Year