I am a failure

They say to write what you know.  I have many interests.  I love video games, music (playing and tabbing), and various geeky things.  But there’s only one thing I’ve ever really been good at, and that is failing at my career and life.

I am a librarian.  Or, at least I tried to be.  I got my MLIS in 2008.  It was supposed to be a boom time for libraries.  You could get that degree and write your own ticket, any kind of library in any state you wanted to work.  All of the baby boomers were going to be retiring in a year, and the world was going to be in desperate need of librarians.  Those of you who remember the year 2008, however, remember it for mainly one thing.  It was the year the US economy threw up in its own mouth a little.

The profession never recovered.  In 2012, nearing 2013, the library field remains a barren hellscape on which soil no job can grow.  When people retire their positions are often not replaced, but are integrated into other positions (or the retiree is replaced with a paraprofessional).  Those positions are not going to come back.  Jobs that are shed like that due to budget cuts don’t come back, even if things do recover.  

And that is how I became a failure.  2008 was four years ago, and I have spent that time applying for jobs everywhere.  I’m not picky about location, if it looks like I’m even kind of qualified for it, I apply as long as I speak the language, or think I can fake it for just long enough to get away with it.  Despite having very strong references from my fieldwork and three years of experience, four years later I only have a very part-time job to show for it (which is where my three years of experience comes from).  And when I say very part-time, I’m talking even less than half-time.  Not even sustenance-level employment.

And that’s what I want, the ability to sustain myself, the ability to make a life for myself.  But after four years of constant rejection and failure, I have finally come to a point where I’ve stopped dreaming that I’ll ever make a go of this career.  I’ve stopped identifying as a librarian.  It used to be that when people asked me what I do I’d tell them I’m a librarian by career, but am currently using my degree to (etc., etc.).  Now I just face the truth and tell them:

I am a failed librarian. 

And this blog shall serve as a testament to my failure.  To others it may be more useful as a warning, or something to laugh at, or as a record of the struggles of new and new-ish librarians.