The happiest of holiday news...

My situation for the past 6+ years has been that I’m a severely underemployed librarian; I teach info lit as an adjunct and make just enough to cover gas, car insurance, and student loans with a little leftover for a CD (because I’m old) or a bottle of scotch (because I’m awesome) or whatever now and then.  Meanwhile I'm living with my parents at 34 because after that I have not enough money left for food and rent because my life choice to be a librarian was terrible, which is what my entire blog is about. 

OK, so my situation has changed.  For the next 4 months of my life (at least) I am not an underemployed librarian anymore! No, I’m just straight up unemployed now, and just in time for the holidays.  Yeah, so that has now happened.  There wasn’t room for me on the schedule for next semester.

To be clear, this is not because of my performance.  As far as adjuncts go, I tend to be taken care of, in part because my boss is nice and knows my life sucks, but also in part because I’m actually pretty darn good at what I do.  No, the enrollment just wasn’t high enough and the full timers need to be put on the schedule first, so I’m out.

And now I get to figure out what to do for four months, and this is not wonderful.  My options for employment outside of my field are just about as good as options inside my field, which is one of the several reasons that supplementing my income with another part time job hasn’t been an option to begin with.

Problem one: I am a very small, weak person.  Last I stepped on a scale, I was 108 lbs of nothing that even remotely resembled a muscle.  I have a frame and a back that were simply not designed for digging ditches, hauling pig iron, or pulling rickshaws.  Hard physical labor is not an option.

Problem two: I have very little in the way of experience in anything outside of my field.  An office job would be doable—in fact I kind of enjoy mindless data entry.  But how often exactly do you see office jobs that don’t require years of experience?  I do have a couple years of very part-time experience in an office, but that organization has since folded (not my fault, promise), and my old boss is, um, probably dead.  That was not a joke, by the way; I think she literally died.  The organization was the two of us—her as the executive and me as the assistant—so there’s really no one around to prove I ever did it, much less speak to whether or not I was any good at it.

Problem three: I can also cross giving blood off the list.  I looked into it and you apparently need to be at least 110 lbs, and you can refer to problem one to see why that’s a no go.  That’s right; I’m not even qualified to give blood.

So I’m seeing three options in front of me.

Option one: Coincidentally, before this crap went down I applied to another crap, no pay, horrible hours job in my field that would put me behind a reference desk in an academic library, and I just had a phone interview that wasn’t a disaster as far as I could tell, so maybe I’ll get this job.  Putting aside the hours that will see me being awake for 18-19 hours straight on Sundays and then driving home at night in that sleep deprived state, this would actually be pretty great in the fact that it would give me more varied experience for my resume.

Option two: Cashier.  I wouldn’t be making much money, but “literally better than nothing” is pretty much my only salary requirement right now, and this is something I could physically handle that wouldn't necessarily require a lot of experience.  I would not love this job, but a librarian’s gotta do what a librarian’s gotta do (and in most cases this means “anything but actually be a librarian”).

Option three: Start studying science.  Master the field.  Invent a time machine, go back to me at 22 and tell myself, “DON’T BECOME A FUCKING LIBRARIAN.”