I looked back at my old blogs are realized something recently: I write a lot when I'm upset, and when I'm happy I just go about life being happy and only writing snippets of things in my mind.
(Someday these snippets will erupt into a children's book of epic awesomeness. Someday.)
A couple of things have happened recently that have made life extra awesome.
1- The clouds finally lost the battle and let the sun come out for about a week straight. It was glorious. I wore short sleeves. I took Sadie for a small hike and only hit like 3 muddy patches. Which is awesome for up here.
2- During that sunny week, I got a job! As you probably know by now since, let's face it, the people who read this are pretty much my friends who regularly see my posts on Facebook.
2- During that sunny week, I got a job! As you probably know by now since, let's face it, the people who read this are pretty much my friends who regularly see my posts on Facebook.
But yeah, I've landed an internship working 20 hours a week as a teen librarian for the summer at a rural public library, and I couldn't be happier about it.
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| My approximate reaction in the car after landing the job. And then I called my mom, of course. |
It's a bit like combining the two major career paths that I've had in my life, since I'm doing a similar kind of reader's advisory work that I did when I worked at Barnes & Noble but I'm also combining library database and procedure knowledge that I've gleaned in my studies and my work at the UCSB Library.
I'm also more intensely aware of the gaps in my knowledge base that I want to fill in, though. I really want to be able to incorporate a lot of of Web 2.0 tools in my summer reading program, but I lack the programming skills to actually do the website work to make it happen the way my brain has it envisioned and it's a bit frustrating to not be able to make my own dreams come true. I fully intend to continue this aspect of my education after I'm done with my MLIS, but if I'm going to finish this degree by the end of the year I really need to not let myself get distracted with dreams of CCS and HTML programming classes in the near future. Apparently my 14-year-old cousin knows Javascript programming, though, so maybe I'll just ask him for help...
(Knowledge tidbits like that only serve to make me feel a competitive sense of "Oh yeah, youngin'?!?!" reactions in me lately. Who knew I had a competitive bone in my body? Not me, that's for sure!)
The timing on the job is really perfect since I need to jam out four more classes by the end of December if I want to graduate, and this way I can do one class during the Summer and then three in the Fall and be done. And since the job contract only goes through the end of August. I can realistically think of finishing those three classes all at once. Maybe. Hopefully. One of them could be a thesis class, which is actually something I might welcome since I've had a lot of library-and-literacy-related stuff bubbling around in my brain for the last three years and I'd love a chance to just spew it all out somewhere.
(Although the whole "organize and cite references" portion of it is admittedly less fun. But somehow it's not un-fun either... usually when I'm reading about the stuff I'm interested in it just inspires me further!
It's really just the actually formatting of the citations that isn't fun for me.
Because I'm a nerd like that.
A nerd that is in deep student loan debt because I did as Joseph Campbell suggested and followed my bliss. And the fact that I know I followed my book-bliss in the best way I could means that I will make payments on those student loans until I die and I won't regret a thing.)
A nerd that is in deep student loan debt because I did as Joseph Campbell suggested and followed my bliss. And the fact that I know I followed my book-bliss in the best way I could means that I will make payments on those student loans until I die and I won't regret a thing.)
(Longest parenthetical TO DATE!)
The kiddo also got to start going back to preschool three days a week now thanks to my job, which is really good for her. I've loved ever minute of getting to just hang out and bond with her these last 6 months, but it's clear from her interactions with other kids at playgrounds and such that she really needs time to be with her peers right now too. And now she gets to do just that.
Now, this post has been sitting idle in my "drafts" folder since April and it's July, so I'm just going to hit publish on it and start a new one now. :)
