The Next New Thing (Again)

Today I was offered a job managing a small, rural library. 

I accepted the position. 

I know I just got started on this website, but the truth is I was unemployed for 15 months. 

Things are going to be quiet around here while I learn about my new role (as well as my employer's policy on  personal websites). I hope I don't need to abandon this place completely, but we'll see how it works out. 

Wish me luck!

The Next New Thing

It is so much easier to update on a regular basis when I don't have to think of topics for myself, except the other blog is a poor example since I took most of last week off from there as well.

Anyway. Tomorrow I start classes again. I've signed up for two creative writing classes and one PE class (Zumba!). I haven't taken a writing class since I left Mills, which means I also haven't produced any polished writing since then either. I'm not 100% sure about applying to MFA programs (which means I'm not 100% sure I'll be accepted) but the timing seems right. If I can't find a library job, I might as well use my free time to pursue other interests. 

Of course, getting my career back on track is still my main priority, but writing is ... a compulsion. Might as well try to do something with it instead of just continuing to fill journal after journal with vague ideas and insecurities. If (WHEN) I find a job, I can always defer for a year, or apply instead to a low residency program. I have a lot of options. 

Pity Par-tea

In the wake of being turned down for another one of those perfect jobs, I was standing in the grocery store looking for garam masala to go in the vegan saag aloo I planned to make and instead came across a box of PG Tips tea bags and I started crying right there in the aisle.*

So embarrassing.

Those are the tea bags I used to buy when I lived in England. And they were sitting on the shelf next to a box of Hob Nobs and Cadbury's Digestive Biscuits, which I used to buy to go with my tea. In England. Where I used to live.

I loaded them all into my cart.  All I could think was I could be sitting in England right now, drinking tea and eating hobnobs (although with the time difference I would probably be drinking a pint and eating a curry) and I would have permanent residency status by now.  And a job. 

I can't believe I still feel this way sometimes. After a year, you'd think leaving England would not feel like a mistake I just made this morning. I wish it didn't feel like a mistake at all. 

I put the tea and the cookies back on the shelf. After traveling 6,000 miles they were super-expensive, and I knew they wouldn't taste the way I remember.

*I had the same reaction one time in England when Sainsbury's started carrying Oreos. What can I say? Processed food makes me emotional.

This may be why I am still unemployed

Sometimes I see a job description that I just know is perfect for me -- I have the required skills and experience and it's located in a place I really want to live. So, I send off my application and then stop looking at other job postings.  I tell everyone I know about the perfect job in the perfect place. 

I spend hours on the perfect job's website, critquing it, imagining myself working there. I think about how I will spend my lunch times and how I will personalize my office. And I start house hunting. I email real estate listings to my mother with subject lines that say things like, "Look at the garden!" and "OMG The Kitchen!!"

Then, when I don't get the job, the door slams shut on the life I thought I would have. I mourn for weeks. And because I told everyone,  people ask me about the job, about the interview, and I have to reveal my rejection. This is a soul sucking process.

Only after I convince myself I never wanted to work there in the first place do I return to the recruitment sites and start looking again, and invariably the cycle repeats.  Maybe it's time to try a new approach...

Networking for (Insecure) Dummies

I suppose, on a social level,  most people consider themselves worth knowing. I certainly do. I’ve said before that it takes some effort to get to know me. As is probably the case with a lot of writers, I’m more confident on paper than I am in person. I find small talk with strangers excruciating. I’m trying to work on that because I hate being the person at the party alone in the corner or hovering around the one person I know. I don’t want to stand around with the other outsiders; I want to participate. As usual though, I’m starting slow. I made a joke with the barista at my regular coffee house. I comment on the weather with my softball teammates (most of whom I don’t know). By the end of the season, I might ask about their weekend.

But there’s another way to look at this topic, and that is being worth knowing career-wise. I’m talking about professional networking.

To aid in my job search, I have “liked” and subscribed to a number of advice columns and library list-servs. I followed the advice about “branding” myself and establishing a professional presence online. I joined relevant groups on LinkedIn and followed big names in the library profession on Twitter. I made business cards.

What I haven’t done is joined in the conversation. In the job seeking circles there are numerous threads and discussions about the effectiveness of personal branding etc. There are also a lot of complaints about the economy, library closures and long-term unemployment. I find these topics depressing and unhelpful. If I sit around participating in the whining circle, I start to remember that in addition to being unemployed,  I’m turning 30 in a few months, I live with my parents and I am single. The male version of this cliche would be playing video games in the basement. But I’m writing blog posts in the shed about how I have nothing to contribute.

This is all the more frustrating for me because I used to be worth knowing. The community of prison librarians in the UK is  small, but  active. When I worked at the prison, I was on the national committee. I was a person other people called for help, for advice, and for information. I helped plan and execute training days and annual conferences. Professionally, I had a lot of potential and I was ambitious and … I totally burned out. But that was because of the prison, not the job.

Anyway, next week I’m going to New Orleans for the ALA annual conference. I will be volunteering in a school library and attending a job fair. I will make jokes and talk about the weather. I will go armed with a fistful of resumes and business cards and if anyone follows the address to my website they’ll be directed here.

Um.  I may not have thought this through. 

 

*This post was originally published at The Daily Theme on June 17, 2011

Intellectual Pioneers

So, this is one of those topics that gets Mom all excited because it means research. When I moaned about it, she suggested I write about the president of the college I went to because she was the first female president of a college west of the Mississippi. I find that difficult to believe because the school, first a seminary then a college,  is 158 years old, and has always been west of the Mississippi. Also, it has always been a woman’s college except for two weeks in 1990, which resulted in the college needing a new president.  Anyway, I know there was a female president before this one. But I’m not going to prove it because I’m not in the mood for research right now.

I was talking to my Dad on the way home tonight about how I completely forgot to mention this website in the interview I had last week – didn’t conceal it on purpose, but actually forgot to mention how I’m spending half my days. And he said that if they find it (and they will) they’ll probably want to hire my mom instead because her essays are researched and mine are silly. And I was like, thanks a lot jerk. But I didn’t actually say that, because I don’t speak that way to my father.

Look. I like this project. I didn’t think we’d make it this long, but I’m glad we’re still doing it. But this is not a job for me. I write this stuff mostly to be funny, or at least entertaining. Occasionally a topic really interests me and then I do the research, but not everything excites my curiosity. If this were my job, it would be different. I’d be answering questions, or hopefully, helping people learn how to answer their own questions. But I’m only willing to put a certain amount of time into these essays – like a maximum of an hour – because I have a lot of research and reading to do that is unrelated.

Getting my master’s degree and starting out my career in England has handicapped me. I am not saying I am unqualified to work in this country because that is absolutely not true. But librarianship is practical career and it involves a lot of different skills, most of which are honed on the job. So, while I don’t have a job, I’m spending a lot of time trying to figure out the American way – the American vocabulary, the American resources. I’ve taken classes since I got back, and spent a lot of time reading professional literature.  I’m not trying to hint that I am an intellectual pioneer, self-training for the job I eventually hope to land. I wouldn’t be getting anywhere at all without the wealth of information and advice available to unemployed librarians concerned with keeping their skills up-to-date. There are a lot of us, working while unemployed. This website is the thing I do when I’m either reflecting on it, or I want a break from it.

Especially when I realize that the thing that would help me the most, I haven’t done. I should be volunteering in a library. But I really thought that at any moment I might find a job and I didn’t want to let anyone down by suddenly quitting. Which was not a concern I had when starting this project – although it is now.

Anyway, another reason writing this essay isn’t like a job: I’m actually writing this in the middle of the night, in the middle of my bed, wearing the nightgown I tried to dress Milo in earlier today. I wish I had been able to video him running up the stairs while the little dress slid further down with each step. By the time he reached the top, it was just hanging off his tail. You probably had to be there.  

Milo wishes he wasn't there.

PS: Mills College is named after its founders, Cyrus and Susan Mills. Susan became as president of the college in 1890 and served for 19 years.  I knew this already. I’m guessing what my mom actually meant to say was that Mills was the first women’s college established west of the Rockies, and is the second oldest women’s college still in existence.

PPS: Mom has clarified to say that she meant Aureilia Henry Reinhardt (Mills President 1916 – 1943) was the first female president.  But as we’ve already established, that is wrong too. 

*This post was originally published at The Daily Theme on April 1, 2011