~ Curator’s Field Notes ~
How slow adventures can be good for your career and mental health.
When you’re so intensely focussed on your career or family, your attention to where you are in life can go unchecked. For some people, this lack of checking-in with yourself can last years or even decades. For others, they check in too often and it stops progression forward and upwards. I think this ‘analysis paralysis’ can be a cause of unhappiness for some.
Taking a sabbatical to row across an ocean, cycle across a country (or continent), or run across a desert, might seem like unhelpful to some, but I think it can be useful in ways we don’t really consider.
My advice on career transition
At some point in our lives, we decide that what we are doing as a job or career at the moment, isn’t the best for us in the future.
In 2015, after some 12 years in the military – itself a spur of the moment decision that I made when I saw how much friends were really thriving in it - I decided that I should try something new to support causes that I’m passionate about. I’d reached a waypoint in my career, although not achieved the things I’d wanted to – but realised that I had stalled and momentum in a new direction would help me regain the initiative.
This article came about as I regularly get asked by friends leaving the military, how transition works from someone who’s undergone many of them and how it can be more successful.
This is a simplified version of how I transferred from the Royal Marines into the BBC, an international media charity, going freelance, and then starting my own creative agency (Haus of Hiatus).