Midlife career change?

This has been a busy week with the music festival and with no day off to sit and puddle about. On my day off I attended a science editing workshop ostensibly to improve my editing skills for our Surgery newsletter and handouts but also to try on a new career. My fellow students were from the CSIRO and various government departments focussed on communicating with the public and other lay people on scientific topics. The younger ones had degrees in media and communications, the older ones had slipped into the editing role sideways, finding that their role as gatekeeper of sensitive information meant wordsmithing and editing.
Our trainer from Biotext, Hilary Cadman, kept our attention for the full day with short grabs of information then exercises in groups or alone. She refreshed my knowledge of the basics of editing and I picked up on the continuing controversies in the editing world that I didn’t cotton onto when doing editing by distance education. There is nothing like personal interaction for understanding the nuances and subtleties of a subject.
So would I leave vetting to become an editor, even a veterinary editor? It would mean the loss of my veterinary identity, the kind, caring, animal-lover me and the authoritative, credible me. I would be starting out again as a junior, learning the jargon, habits and attitudes of a new professional, a new persona. I am past worrying about the adequacy of my qualifications and experience and I know what is permissible, what is possible as a veterinarian in this place and time. If I made a fresh start all those insecurities would dog me as I made new contacts and built up relationships around my new work.
Changing careers is more than a change of job it is an overhaul of self and identity. When I left my job as a government vet to marry Chris and live on a farm the mat was pulled from under me. I had spent five years training and five years learning the ropes of vetting in private practice and then in the Department of Agriculture and suddenly I was “just” a farmer’s wife. I did not know who I was if I was not a vet. Although I had looked forward to time to write and reflect I devised endless household and farm chores to fill time and myself as I tried to find myself in the new situation. No one in the town knew of my past life or was even interested in it. Women there gained brownie points for being good wives and mothers -working mothers were the source of society’s evils. I learnt to keep quiet about my profession especially after my first baby. I was tangled in a morass of conflicting identities and expectations until I took some locum positions and started to regain my foothold on myself.
It is not only experience that forms the self it is the whole glove of identity that a person pulls on when they call themselves, or are called, a certain type of professional. As soon as I call myself a vet, I am expected to know a certain set of skills and knowledge and to operate within my field with judgement, authority and a high degree of ethical behaviour. If I changed my career I would change my reputation as well as the expectations others have of me.
So although a change is tempting, I will probably stick to vetting with small excursions into writing and editing scientific material. A working day spent sitting in front of a flickering screen would probably send me bananas in a week, anyway.

Eyes on me

A friend of mine is conducting a research project investigating drivers’ actions, responses and distractions. He has published in a similar vein on pilots. Last night he brought two movie cameras over and mounted them in my car, one on the dash and one on the back seat. At first I was very conscious of these ‘eyes’ on me. I didn’t primp my hair in the mirror, make mobile calls or let myself be distracted by the scenery... but eventually I relaxed into the situation and drove nearly normally.

The funny thing was that as I picked through the vegetables at Choku Bai Jo I still had the sensation of being on camera. I thought about how an onlooker might interpret my movements and facial expressions. Shades of The Truman Show? I often imagine what the people around me are thinking about. Perhaps they are pretty much the same as me. My mind is often pretty blank or worrying about what I am to do next rather than in the moment. I doubt my facial expressions have more than a fleeting connection to what is actually happening to or around me.

The feeling I have when the camera is on is akin to the one I feel writing this blog. I feel like a character on the blog. Not only my writing is crafted but so is my self. In fact the very crafting of the writing forces me to condense this self. The elements that are the self in this particular situation or recollection are gathered into words inadequate to the task. So many complexities and layers of self lie between my brain, my fingers and the paltry words that spill onto the screen. Still words are the only way I have of communicating with you. Heaven knows how your brain receives anything half like what my brain sent out!

My Working Self

Somehow I've managed to keep my working self and my writing/academic self wide apart. None of my poems or stories mention animals and there has been no reason to mention my profession to my uni tutor/supervisor. Animals, especially pets, often give writing a sentimental undertone so I guess I have avoided them, except in practice newsletters and brochures. I thought I'd better put the record straight and prove that I am devoted to my patients and enjoy the company of my co-workers - after all I spend the greater part of my waking life with them!
Although I have a special interest in the medicine of cats I see far more dogs in a day than cats. I have no pics of them though as I haven't had to present a dog in an assignment lately! I also see a fair number of rabbits, some guinea pigs and birds, an alpaca and the odd cow. Although I used to own a farm animal practice where I saw and treated any species in a day, including ostriches, emus, koalas, goats, sheep, cattle, horses, camels, and tigers (I've treated two!), I now concentrate on animals that can be carried/led into the practice.
Our clients all come to us by word of mouth. We are off the highway in a quiet part of Canberra which has very little passing traffic and new clients often miss our sign. So our clients are generally self-selected: they treat their pets as part of the family, give their pets' health financial priority and take our advice seriously. Such a change from the bush where I saw a wide cross-section of society and animal owners every day. Stock owners valued my work according to the value of the beast, pet owners varied from those who treated their pets as disposable to those who were emotionally dependant on them.
When we are having a bad day (translation: every consult is a euthanasia/ an old canine friend is given a bad diagnosis/ we can't get an answer on why a cat is rapidly deteriorating/ a patient dies under anaesthesia) we make a fuss of a puppy and have a cuddle with a kitten or have a good communal sob!
Isn't it interesting that this post has quite a different tone to the others? Posts about my daily life are a little philosophical and tend to sound like a story. This is more colloquial, at least for me, and mimics my work self. The work self that is upbeat and busy but professional and kind.

Dear Diary...

I guess that I have always been a life writer. Who gave me that first red leather diary at age 10, I wonder? In it are recorded my friends, my meals, my dogs and some of my doings. Only 4 lines are allowed for each day so it is very concise. The blue-black cloth cover of the first diary I wrote at boarding school is ragged. The lines of writing in it are overrun by doodles and graffiti applied during prep as I struggled to stifle yawns of boredom.
As I pass through the years of adolescence the diaries get larger and are filled not only with the passions and disappointments of teenagehood but with cuttings, tickets and cards. My life is documented in detail. There is a gap while I am at uni - no time for introspection or documentation there. A brief and tantalising glimpse of my first marriage break-up is noted in a loose leaf folder from the time. Then I am obsessive about recording my babies births and milestones.
As the children grow more independent I write more in my journals - yes, journals rather than diaries, at this stage, I think. They are where I work out my ideas and values and chew through decisions and situations I don't fully comprehend. Somehow writing puts it all in order, makes it actual and understandable.
My current journal is all these things plus a creative space. I write haiku, tanka and poetry. I sketch ideas for stories and for this blog. Photographs and montages grace its pages. I record and savour journeys, dreams and conversations.
But now this blog takes a lot of my journalling time. Blogging is different to journalling. The audience is obviously different. What I write in my journal is for my eyes and heart only, what I write on here must not tread on any toes or reveal too much self in public. I am careful of the self I construct here. In my journal I am like the old house at "Myall Park" which just grew higgledy piggledy. In here I am more like the well-thought out and carefully planned home of your dreams squeezed onto a Gungahlin block.