Be stable like a sea turtle

Stability: it’s something many of us strive for, but what does it actually mean? For me, stability is having a balanced personal and professional life, achieving financial and emotional security, and feeling centred and grounded from within. These aren’t easy to achieve at any time, let alone now in this unprecedented time of uncertainty.

According to the wonderful Divine Animals Oracle by Stacey Demarco*, one of Australia’s most-high profile meta-physicists, the magical qualities of sea turtles are stability and resilience. Demarco states “Operating from a stable base is advantageous...set an intention or direction and steadily flow towards it.” Sounds easy for a sea turtle to do, but what about for humans?

Achieving a stable base can be quite challenging for freelance translators and interpreters, and the instability of our profession can be a source of significant stress. A recent survey by Translators and Interpreters Australia** on the impact of Covid-19 on the profession revealed the vast majority of practitioners, myself included, had experienced a decrease in their workload to varying degrees since the pandemic started earlier this year. This has almost three quarters of people considering a career move.

Linguists have transferable skills that can be used in other professions such as copywriting, freelance writing, content creation and language teaching. However, during busy and even regular work periods, we often don’t have the time to commit to up-skilling and re-skilling; so the current slowdown could be an ideal time to finally make that lateral career move you’ve been considering for a while.

Personally, I’ve started doing freelance copywriting, which is an easy extension from years of translating marketing materials, and I’m also studying content creation and digital marketing via online courses.

I’ve always been interested in marketing, so I’m enjoying the creativity that comes with copywriting, and how it’s helping me to write more efficiently and concisely. I’m even considering teaching English again online to Japanese students as a way to brush up on my English grammar, which is useful to do from time to time.

Apart from expanding my skill set and diversifying and stabilising my income base, acquiring these new skills and refreshing existing ones will definitely benefit my main profession of translation, and also bring variety to my work day.

So like a sea turtle that hatches from its egg and immediately heads toward the calm ocean under the bright moonlight, I will continue to steadily and patiently move toward acquiring new skills while consolidating my existing ones, with a sense of assurance that this path is leading to the stability I’m seeking in my professional life.

*https://www.rockpoolpublishing.com.au/divine-animals-oracle

**https://tia.professionalsaustralia.org.au/