Quite a Year

It’s been a strange year. It’s flown by like no other year I can remember, and yet more has happened than in any other year I can remember. Here are some of the stand-outs, in the order I thought of them:

• My best friend fell in love and moved just about as far away from here as she could get and still be in the U.S. Then she got engaged.
• The Library Society of the World got started and is now pretty much the cornerstone of my social life (sad, I know, but these people are amazing and I’ve made some wonderful friends).
• Swing dancing re-emerged as a hobby.
• My library survived consultants and reorganization (very minor reorganization, but it entailed many meetings and some uncertainty anyway).
• I totaled my car and bought a new one, which also introduced me to the new experiences of dealing with insurance companies, negotiating with car dealers, and making car payments.
• My computer died and so I bought a new one… and learned Vista and Office 2007 in the process.
• Librarianship and my place in it started to make more sense. Most of the time, I’m even reasonably competent now, which is great!
• My sister graduated from college.
• My youngest brother started ask my librarian-self for help with his research… and got a healthy dose of my sister-self’s help into the bargain.
• Twitter happened. ‘Nuf said about that.
• I wrote a chapter of a book with one of my co-workers and discovered two things: that she and I work very well together, and that chapter writing is a pain in the neck…. and inordinately time-consuming.
• I figured out how to direct a vocal choir, and started directing the college handbell choir.

Meanwhile, what with all this stuff going on, I’ve had an increasingly hard time writing. I haven’t kept my paper journal, haven’t written here very much, haven’t written in any of the places I normally wrote before. Currently I don’t know what I think about that. I’ve been staring at the screen trying to think of something coherent to say about it, but I can’t seem to find my way through to a complete thought. All I know is that I hope this changes, and soon. And I hope that I can manage my workload and personal life such that writing becomes the seamless part of my life that it was a year ago.

Meanwhile, I’m going to kick back and enjoy my last Sunday before the beginning of Winter term. Fall Term took a lot out of me, and I don’t think I’ve completely recharged my batteries yet, but Winter Term waits for no librarian. And I’m actually kind of excited about the coming term. We’ll begin with round two of trying to hire a social sciences librarian, and there are some really interesting classes coming up that I can’t wait to support.r