Well hello there! It’s been some time, as you may (or may not) have noticed.
Either way I’m back, a little wiser and a lot more refreshed, and I’ll be around for a while.
If you’ve been following me on Twitter or via my other business, you’ll know that I’ve been working on a Very Important Personal Project of late:
Sarah’s Very Important Personal Project
Needless to say, this has been a period of a huge transition in my personal life, with a significant impact on my professional life too.
Transitional periods invariably make us re-examine our priorities. I’ve had to think long and hard about whether blogging is where I want to spend my precious time these days.
But blogging has never been a purely business exercise for me, and I’m keen to have a go at returning to a regular publishing schedule.
I’m curious to see how I’ll re-find my voice and re-negotiate a position for myself in what is now a very crowded space. With so many outstanding translation bloggers nowadays, it feels more intimidating than it ever did.
So I’ve decided to ditch all my expectations and just do what I enjoy most – write, and see what happens.
I’d be very interested to hear from other translators and interpreters: how have you handled transitional periods in your personal life, and specifically the impact they’ve had on your professional life?
**Apologies if you’ve noticed some funny goings-on with my website and blog this week. I’ve moved host and it’s revealed some interesting gremlins in the system**
Congratulations! Your new project is sweet and georgeous .Enjoy it as much as you can.
Hi Sarah,
Congratulations on the new arrival. Unlike you and Veronica moving to a new country made me work even harder and want to do so. In hindsight I wish I hadn’t, because it would have been the perfect excuse to allow myself to settle down properly and explore my new home (what is the point in moving otherwise?).
Anyway, the one thing about making a career for yourself as a freelancer is that you know you’ve done it all yourself – i.e. you have got the tools and the skills and can do it over and over again. I have started over a few times myself, and I believe the secret of it is if you do whatever you do with passion, you always take something from it and starting over is never from the very beginning.
I should be interested in hearing about how you cope with translation and motherhood. I am starting to plan to embark on a similar project and, if you feel like sharing your experience, it’d be great to get some insight!
Best of luck!
I too never fear starting over, Karen – there’s great power in knowing that you’ve got a transferable toolkit in your back pocket.
About the translation and motherhood thing: I can write about my experiences as a translator until the cows come home, but words often fail me when it comes to sharing personal things… I’m not sure why. I guess I’ll have to find the sweet spot between the two that releases the writer’s block.
In the meantime, I wish you the very best of luck with your project. It can be scary, and I’ve often felt ill-equipped, but those kind of projects often challenge us to produce our very best work and add enormously to our toolkit 🙂
Welcome back – and well done: some project really have an undeniably strict deadline 😉 Lkg forward to reading you soon again
Good to see you back, Sarah! 🙂 I look forward to meeting your lovely Very Important Personal Project in Brisbane soon. 🙂
Great to have you back, Sarah. You’ve been missed.
Dear Sarah,
Welcome back!
Thank you so much, by the way, for your great post at http://www.sarahsarchives.online/21-tips-for-timid-bloggers/. I do find it very encouraging because it sometimes gives me stomach cramps when I think about what people, should they decide to enter my name into Google, will find out about me via my blog.
Oh, and I LOVE the photo of your Very Important Personal Project! Congratulations!
Best wishes and regards from sunny Bristol in the UK,
Elisabeth
Like all the comments above about embracing the change, especially personal life.
After a long holiday, I came back to read your blogs this week and found out that ‘i have missed nothing’, :). Great to see you again though.
Congratulations again and hope you are enjoying working on your important personal project!
Congratulations! You’ve been blessed with the most precious and indescribable feeling a person can ever experience. So, ANYTHING/ANYONE else can wait. Enjoy your miracle of life and relax!
Thanks, Sandra – will do!
Congrats and welcome back.
Transitions make life more varied in my view. Embrace the change, and don’t worry about forgetting past; it’s not going anywhere!
They certainly can affect priorities in life, so work can take a back seat, but I expect it will always be important to some degree if just to satisfy that feeling of contributing to a home, a community, a profession etc.
I’m sure there’s a clever quote on the importance of work out there somewhere, but you get my drift.
Thanks, Luke.
I like your reminder to embrace the change. Transitional periods can be tough as you’re going through them, and it can feel like work is just one more thing to juggle on top of everything else, but in hindsight I can see that some of the best, most creative and most satisfying periods of my career have come out of times like this… The role of work in the larger picture of one’s life is certainly very interesting.
Congratulations and welcome back, Sarah!
Thanks, Marta!
Beautiful personal project 🙂 Congratulations! And welcome back. For me, moving to a totally new country/culture was a personal transitional period with impact on my professional life. It also came with what psychologists call a ‘cultural shock’. I had 2 periods within the transitional period when I had no interest whatsoever in working. I was using my free time for all kinds of personal hobbies and interests. I was working only for my old clients and had no interest in searching further. Now that I look back, I blame myself for loosing so much precious time, but I realize I needed it. Otherwise, I would have also experienced a burnout along with the cultural shock.
I’d say therefore that we should always do what it feels right to do. If you feel that blogging will bring some balance (or whatever you need) between your professional and personal life, do it. Otherwise, just give it some more time to rest 🙂
I was always a reader of your blog, but never had the guts to comment, just because there were many great commenters and it was intimidating for me. And here I am, writing my first long comment on your blog (yeey!!! 🙂 ) Everything what’s intimitading is also challenging.
Very wise words, Veronica. There’s a season for everything, as they say, and avoiding burnout is a crucial skill for a long, successful and fulfilling career.
Like you, I found that I lost my appetite for actively pursuing new work challenges after I moved to Australia. I needed to put my energy into re-building my personal life for a while. I learned such a lot about myself in the process though, and when the time was right, I was able to apply this to my professional life too. I’m certain it made me a better translator.
I’m so glad you commented – that was a useful reminder for me, and re-affirmed my decision to return to blogging 🙂