Once a Librarian…

(Featured photo is the result of the search “hopeless” – photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash)

I’m having a lot of feelings. Feelings I didn’t expect when I first decided it was time to leave libraries.

I guess part of the reason for the feelings is I didn’t actually decide. It was more like an atrophy. Or attrition. I just didn’t apply to library jobs. At first it was specific to the jobs: this one was too far away, that one was focusing on an area I wasn’t super passionate about, etc. I think I realized it was a concrete desire when I didn’t apply for a job that seemed a perfect fit for my skills and interests – it paid well and was a 5 minute commute. Can’t beat that, right?But I let the application deadline pass.* And I it dawned on me that I just didn’t want to go back to libraries.

Part of it was definitely COVID related. My last job was managing a pretty large team in terms of 1-on-1 supervision. I met with about 18 employees on a regular every other week basis. The check-ins were a great idea, especially since they were in lieu of the dreaded YEARLY PERFORMANCE REVIEW. But these check-ins became really hard. They were no longer about career growth, checking in on learning objectives or questions about services or policies. They were now heartfelt talks about how our lives were changing. Uncertainty. Fear. And I’m a good leader. I really am. I got us all through the various stages of closing and slowly reopening. But it took a toll – I took all of that home with me every night and it built up like plaque in my emotional arteries.

Another part was a harder to pin down feeling that I was – how to say this delicately? Flittering around. I’d been trying different roles, learning, growing, teaching, learning some more. But I’d kind of come to a point where I didn’t feel like I had depth in anything. Breadth, experience, connections, all of that good stuff. But could I tell anyone what my real passion was? Accessibility, yeah. Being an open and welcoming place, definitely. Helping people, always. But…other than that? Hard for me to get on any soapbox and give a real heartfelt speech about My Life’s Work.

So I’m going back to what I know I love: learning stuff. Fiddling with things. Teaching myself skills and feeling that indescribable something that you get from solving a thorny problem in an elegant way. The reason I went to school to get my MLIS in the first place was because I’d fallen in love with Information Architecture. And before that, I’d obsessed over User Interface Design. Way way before that, I spent a couple of weeks one summer observing how many times a participant could click a mouse button in a minute (thank you, Dr. Nilsen).