Now I know how teachers feel. Or farmers, or fishermen, or... well, I can't think of any other seasonal jobs, really. I think for many of us in the heritage field, especially those that work in seasonal museums, can't help but feel that strange bittersweet tang of the end-of-season. It's a combination of relief, sadness, satisfaction, loneliness and fear of the unknown that I don't think exist in many other jobs.
First of all, it's odd enough to work in the tourism industry (and let's not kid ourselves, museums are tourism), where the busiest time is the summer months and you are the busiest when most of your friends and even other colleagues are taking weeks off to enjoy the cottage or drive cross-country. I don't think I've had more than a few days off in the summer since I was about 16 and had my first part-time job. You get used to it, although it's sometimes hard to explain to friends that you need to take your vacation in the Fall or Spring and, well it can't interfere with Christmas programs, or Halloween, or March Break, and don't forget Easter, and that week of summer student job interviews and training... It is strange to have to work when most people are off.
Today was exactly one week before the last open day of the season at my museum. I delivered the last program. The staff are writing their end of season reports and I was working on my program plan for the 2012 season when a wave of melancholy swept over me.
I could hear the girls (yes, I call them "the girls"; I can't help it) laughing down in the museum lobby and it struck my suddenly that I won't be hearing that come next week. They'll move on to other jobs, or back to school, this summer a blip on the radar of their lives. For me, on the other hand, every operating season is significant; successful programs, great visitor numbers, happy visitors, a great team of staff. I get to move back to the basement of one of my sister museums, which is nice, don't get me wrong! It has a real kitchen, a photocopier that works, reliable internet, a fax machine, is close to shops and food, not to mention the fact that it's full of my colleagues and, therefore, company.
I know someone who's writing her doctoral thesis on how heritage professionals become their museums, feel overly connected to them. Today one of my colleagues from a sister museum asked if I'd found my "forever home" at my museum. The fact that I call it my museum should be indication enough. When I sighed and said, "I can't help it! Why does this always happen?" She laughed and agreed that you'd have to drag her dead body from her museum.
The point is that if we personify and "become" our museums, I suppose that it's only natural to feel a bit abandoned at the end of the season. Staff leave, the visitors leave and you're left alone in a dusty old house with drafts and snakes in the basement. When the maintenance guys come and board up the downstairs windows it's like the nail in the coffin. Then I get to pack my office stuff in a box and move back into my off-season office in another museum's basement, surrounded by pictures of the past summer, my staff and museum.
I'll still make as many trips out to my museum as possible, though. I don't care that there's no ceiling light in my office, that the internet is unreliable at best, that I need to wear mittens because of the drafts, that there's no coffee machine, or that there are no other people.
I miss my museum already. And I like to think that it misses me.
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