Career development

I spend some of my time working as a translator from my wife's language to my mother tongue.

It is a very useful skill to have, particularly as I am freelance so can choose when to work (or rather choose when not to work - turning down a contract is in my hands, whereas conjuring some up when things are quiet is a challenge). As I work over the internet, it is also a job I can do anywhere in the world and in a wide variety of settings (such as while travelling).

This career development arose through my circumstances as I became fluent in my wife's language, but it was not my first attempt to find a job I could do that fitted with our somewhat nomadic existence between our two countries.

In fact, I also tried the following over the past decade or so:

• Language teaching (I have had a few friends as students, but did not have the qualifications or settled lifestyle to join a language school);

• Radio journalist (I did pick up one job as a fixer for a specific radio programme, but it didn't lead to a new career on the radio waves);

• TV documentary maker (Someone offered me commission if I could interest tourist destinations in having a film made for a regional TV programme - but as it was really a vanity project where they charged the venues featured the town I picked to try this out wasn't favourable);

• Clothing import/export (We took some clothing from my wife's country to my own and I ran a weekend market stall for three months, but the styles weren't popular there or at the shops I tried to interest);

• Accessories import/export (I managed a few orders for small accessory items, but it didn't take off as the international business I hoped, even with a place that took our stock on sale or return and trying through an online shopping site);

• Consultant (I continue to work in my professional area on a part-time contract and have managed a few consultancy contracts in related areas, running training courses, setting up websites, producing publications, but these have proved insufficient to fill the rest of my time);

• Blogging (This and other blogs I occassionally write are labours of love rather than for making money - which is just as well, as they make no money!);

It is sometimes said that success comes from not being beaten by failure.

In the same spirit as the above, I emailed a load of websites just over five years ago offering to translate them into my mother tongue. One responded and I had my first translation contract.

I then joined a translators' website and gained other work - though quickly learned people seeking translators through the site were looking for the lowest price. This was good for experience and kept me busy, but was not well paid. So I decided to become qualified, did a distance education course and passed the translation exam.

Now translation fills the rest of my working time and is at least half my income.

Any of the above ideas could have worked - and may have done so if the cards had fallen differently or I had persevered or innovated for a longer time - or simply had more aptitude.

I feel fortunate now to have this skill and employment as a translator, but every one of these enterprises was a fork in the road that could have led me in a different direction.

Time management

You don't need me to tell you about the Pomodoro Technique for time management as there is a free pdf booklet by its inventor Francesco Cirillo, available here:
http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

I first came across the concept in a newspaper article. It is an extremely simple way to avoid becoming distracted by interruptions, and is ideally suited to people who work on computers in the internet age.

Basically it involves working for 25 minutes then taking a 5 minute break. The working period is named a pomodoro after Italian tomato shaped kitchen timers. Every four pomodoros, the break can be extended to 15 minutes.

I thought I needed to give this a go when I was holed up with lots of work to get through in January this year. After setting timers to force me to concentrate on the task in hand - no even looking at emails until the alarm had sounded - I decided to keep at it. It took me a while to get around to reading the booklet by Francesco Cirillo as it seemed to me there was little to add to the technique than the description given above. However, there is a little more to it in terms of work planning, evaluating the time particular tasks take and increasing productivity.

After I started to keep a paper record of tasks, it occurred to me there must be a smartphone app to help with this and, sure enough, there are quite a few. Having investigated them, I've actually gone for the simplest, a simple timer, and use this with a paper record.

The app I use is called Focus Time, available for iPhone via the following link (this is my own independent choice and I make no money from linking to it - see my advertising policy):
https://itunes.apple.com/app/focus-time/id340156917?mt=8

There are still plenty of opportunities to prevaricate, of course. My 5-minute breaks often extend beyond this. Other tasks can come along and divert me - though the technique is to note these down as new tasks and assign pomodoros to them.

All the same, when I start the timer I know that I will give 25 minutes undivided attention to the task in hand. And at the end of the day if I want to know what I've actually spent my time on, I have a record.

Global Postural Reeducation

My memory tag for 22 March 2013 is having a consultation to examine whether the clicking in my neck I have been experiencing for some months is due to poor posture.

And it seems my posture is worse than I thought!

It is not just a case of sitting up straight at a desk, instead of spending hour after hour in a slouch with my laptop on my lap.

In summary, my chin is pushed too far forward, my head is inclined backwards and to the right, my lower spine is curved backwards and my right shoulder is lower than the left.

The evidence was there in the mirror.

The solution proposed by the physiotherapist is Global Postural Reeducation. Which involves much more than sitting up straight!

I was taken through a series of exercises which aim to stretch various muscles, around my spine in particular, so my spine will align as it should, correcting all of the above.

I could feel from the exercises that my body is resisting this realignment. And so I aim to make them part of my daily routine - perhaps in the morning after the review of memory tags I conduct as I wake up. Although given the discomfort this morning, it may be better at the end of the day when I've loosened up.

The exercises are not just about stretching muscles that have set to hold me in the wrong position. It is a mental realignment that is needed as well. Even at this early stage I have some awareness of the position my body wants to slump into - even as I type this sitting at a desk - and the uncomfortable position it should be in, which has to become my new habit.

A quick search of the internet shows that Global Postural Reeducation is widely talked about and this study, at least, suggests it does have a genuine effect:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2474/11/285

So I have added GPR to my mid-life tune-up, which also includes my calorie restriction diet (two days below 600 calories per week) and remembering every day that passes.

Diary

At the beginning of this experiment in remembering every day that passes, I decided that I would not write things down to help me. All the memory tags had to be held in my mind and if I lost an image then I would have nothing to consult to recover it.

The counter on this blog tells me I am now 455 days in and I have not yet lost a day.

But I am now writing a diary covering the period of this experiment. Today I wrote the entry for 23 July 2012.

I tried keeping a diary as a child, but it was really at college that I began to do so seriously. I have diaries covering the decades since then. The secret I found was not to make it a daily chore, but to write in them when I felt like it. Sometimes there are daily entries; sometimes there are gaps of many months, perhaps with an attempt to recap on the lost days when I did finally pick it up again.

Recently I have felt the need to return to writing my diary and have been adding entries for each day since I began this process. The images pinned to my mental calendar are the starting point, but the actual entry is in the style I have always used. Some entries go on for pages, to paint the picture of where I was or to tell the story of something that happened. Others are much shorter.

It is very satisfying to be able to write an entry for a day 9 months ago as if writing it at the end of that day.

If I'm honest, part of my motivation is I do fear I will start losing days or at least some of the details.

My current memory refresh method of recalling a two-day window for each week since I began this process is proving reliable. But the time will come when the number of days will require a quicker refresh process, perhaps a one-day window per month in the longer term. Will the longer breaks between recalling each day be sufficient, or will I start to forget?

My diary is not there as an aid to this process of remembering every day that passes, but a record that will survive if this falls apart.

Sounds familiar

Some of the memory tags pinned to my mental calendar to enable me to remember every day that passes have sounds associated with them.

In several notable cases it is the sound that comes to mind when I first think of the date.

On 7 November 2012 it is the shout of "Obama" in the early hours announcing his victory in the US Presidential election.

So 8 January 2013 it is the ringing of the remote control alarm used to signify that our table in the restaurant is finally free.

On 22 February 2013 it is the sound of my bike chain running through one of the slits in my helmet as a lock up my bike on the first trip I make on it having taken it out of storage returning to our old flat in my wife's country.

Memory lapse

One year three months into this process and finally I have to report a memory lapse.

It was not quite in the form I was expecting this to take. I thought that the day would come when I would try to remember the memory tag for a particular day and would find nothing.

That's not the problem at all.

All 447 tags - at the time of writing - are there. I can confidently say where I was this time last year and what I was doing (not very exciting: 8 March 2012 was a Thursday and I had to stay in for a plumber to fix a tap in the flat we were renting). I can still recall any other day since I began this process.

The problem is more subtle.

My tag for 20 December 2011 is leaving the house were we had rented a room on returning from some time in my wife's country for the last time. We are saying goodbye to the landlady in the image pinned to my mental calendar. She was in a good mood as a neighbour had left a gift of a house plant on her doorstep as a Christmas present and to apologise for any inconvenience and noise as they had been having work done. She came out with a quaintly old English phrase: "I am bowled over".

Or it might have been: "I am knocked out".

For over a year that phrase has been part of my trigger for remembering the day and suddenly, a few days ago, I couldn't for the life of me remember which one it was.

At one moment I will feel certain it was the first one, then I can convince myself it was the other. I feel like an unreliable witness, despite everything.

Now a second memory lapse has snuck up on me. My tag for 20 June 2012 (a Wednesday) is staying at home to complete translation job for a new client. I was feeling particularly pleased because although I spent a hard day working at it, I was being paid a good rate. Part of my tag was sending the completed work off in an email to Maura. Or was it Monica? It definitely began with M.

This one I could look up, but that is not the point.

In fact, scratch that, I just looked through the archaeological layers of my sent emails and there, sure as eggs is eggs, is the email I sent on 20 June 2012. To Monica.

So in both these cases I have the genuine memory and an alternative false memory. Telling them apart, without outside confirmation, is impossible.

The first example will be lost forever unless I find certainty - every time I recall that day, I seek it - but could I even trust certainty if I found it?

This is telling me something profound about how memory works. Or at least how my memory works, or fails to.

Though I'm not yet sure what.