Professional break

In regards to my museum career, I am taking a bit of a professional break. Its needed. I feel over worked. I started questioning my passions. I also was not sure where I wanted this to take me because so many people focus on moving up, but how do you move up in this field. What are my plans? How long will this break be? What will I do during this break?

Currently, I has been focusing on listening to my body. It is healing time. Though are this very moment I am still experiencing the after burn from consuming 2.5 Fire in the Hole wings 9 hours ago, not a healing food, but its a process and I am working on it. In this process of healing my body I also want to heal my mind. I struggled with mediation the past few months because I really put it off. I want to be more meditative.

In the past meditation helped me deal with so much: anger, stress, grief, doubt, etc.. I am currently taking 1-2 minutes a day to just break away from tech and people to just focus on my breathe and how every part of my body feels. The thoughts of, “What can I do for money, can I get all my tasks completed today, how are we going to stay in budget, when will life feel normal again” is removed for just a moment. Once I feel I have that down and I am not letting it slide until the very end of the day, I will move on to sorting through my thoughts that are troubling me and spending more time gradually on meditation.

Additionally, I am working on professional development. I just ordered a book to hone my leadership skills. I am also looking for webinars and workshops that help me become a better educator in the museum space. I also need to get my first aid and CPR training renewed, which could help me currently to become a volunteer or even babysit to make some money. What is taking up a lot of my time right now though, I volunteered to review grant proposals for my old city.

What does that mean? The government and some large organizations or companies can have money set up in their budgets to award to groups who are doing work that follows their mission. These funders will put out a call for non-profits or small companies to propose or tell you more about a project they need money for. Those who get funded are selected with the help of a panel of reviewers, a selection of their peers.

I am reading a lot of materials, investigating their budgets, watching sample videos or combing through brochures to score and provide comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the work they are suggesting to do. Being a reviewer helps me understand what makes a great proposal and feel inspired by the work I had no clue was going on in my community! I am so humbled and proud of the work they are doing. It is reminding me why I wanted to be part of this informal teaching and learning community.

With my partner not yet having a scheduled defense nor a job yet, I am not sure how long this break could be. I know that I want to make good use of this time to refresh, heal and improve myself. It is a journey, but I am taking you with me through this blog. Everyone has points like this in life and I feel like too often its kept private how you deal with it. I want to share this so others realize they are not alone, gain some understanding of how to make it work for them and maybe get inspired.

As always, please share any comments or personal stories in the comments below 🙂 I appreciate them.