I have been thinking quite a lot about languages over the past few days. Today is the first day of my holiday and I have been looking forward to coming back to Belgium for weeks now. What does this have to do with languages? Well, for those of you who don’t know, we have three official languages in Belgium for a start and with the European institutions being based in Brussels, that means that you can count all 24 official EU languages as well.

Today I left my crutches at home. On the last day of my holiday, I managed to injure myself. I was again trying to fit a pint into a half pint glass, burning the candle at both ends. This is the story of what happened to me, why it happened and what I take away from the whole experience. The lessons I learnt also apply to work life and handling the increasing pressure that we face as communication employees (though of course, we are not alone).

So what happened to me on holiday and why? How could I have avoided it?

We are not interviewing film stars, as illustrated above, though the people we choose all play important roles in the field of research and of data science. They are our celebrities, the movers and shakers of our world.

We started a new series of articles on the CESSDA website at the end of last year. My boss and I identify some key players in our field that we would like to interview. I then prepare ten draft questions for them and once the questions are agreed between the two of us, I get in touch with the person and find out whether they are interested.

One of my main tasks at CESSDA is to coordinate our internal communications group (CESSDA Comms Group) which is made up of staff in our service providers (data archives and services in our seventeen member countries and one observer) and in aspiring service providers (in non-member countries that aspire to membership). This is a big group where most countries have several active members in the group.

We all have our day jobs. Our private lives. Our friends and family. Someone to come home to. But what of those who don’t? What if you don’t have a job either because you try and try and don’t get anywhere or you are incapacitated for whichever reason and the job market is closed to you?

What if your past makes it a challenge to be hired at the corner shop down the road? What if you have little formal education and gaps in your CV which you will have to explain to a potential employer with a raised eyebrow? “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”, as the old saying goes.