Positively positive

You're getting by now that I'm aware that I completely ruined my entire life with my horrible career choice of trying to be a librarian.  Yep, I am, no arguing there.  But in honor of Thanksgiving, I'm going to try to think of something positive to say about it.

The good thing about being a librarian is that the work itself doesn't suck.  Ideally.  I mean, no matter where you are, some jobs are just going to suck.  But if you can find a position that doesn't, it sure is nice to be able to help people and feel like you're doing something of value.

Before I embarked on this career, I couldn't fathom the idea of wanting to work.  It's something we do because we have to, not because we want to, right?

One of the things I learned in the management course in library school was that people are most satisfied with their professional lives when they believe that what they're doing really matters.  I had no frame of reference for that tidbit of knowledge to be useful to me at that time, but for some reason I remembered it when I was doing my fieldwork and a cartoon light bulb went off over my head.

The last job I'd had before my fieldwork was, embarrassingly, being one of those people at a busy intersection holding up a sign for a nearby pizza stand.  My entire job was holding up a sign.  I could have been replaced at any moment by a wooden post.  How valuable do you think I felt?

Then I got to do fieldwork and I got to help people.  Directly.  Even when it was something as simple as showing them how to print or explaining how to figure out a bus schedule, it made me giddy to know that people were presenting me with problems, and I was solving those problems for them.

Do I think I'll ever really accept that I have to give up the better half of my waking day, 5 days a week, to something else with no say in the matter?  No, of course not.  But for the first time I actually understood how working life could at least be bearable.  I realized how true it was that workplace satisfaction comes from feeling like your contribution matters.

The good news about the librarian career is that you do get opportunities to do things that feel like they matter.  So if it were actually possible for me to get fully employed in this field, I really would have something to look forward to.

Not only is the work itself not bad, but add on the fact that, while not many people will ever get rich in this field, librarian is a job that, for now, if you were to get it, you wouldn't be starving (assuming you're not living outside of your means).  Also, that was a lot of commas.

Put that all together and this is a career where I could put in a days work, come home feeling like I did something that mattered, and greet a spouse whom I do not argue with over money all the time because I do not have a minimum wage job that forces us to live check to check, paying off one credit card bill with another credit card, and never fully knowing how we'll make rent.  Instead, we live comfortably within our means and, though never rich, aren't constantly stressed out over money either.  That's a pretty damn good life.  In fact, I couldn't ask for better (I'm already assuming the spouse is hot.  With as hot as I am, it goes without saying).

That's the life I could hypothetically have, if only this profession, as nice as it can be if I ever make it to that side of the rainbow, weren't completely devoid of opportunity.  If only this career path had a somewhat reasonable expectation of job placement, it would be pretty sexy.

Yes, I'm thankful for the fact that librarian would be a good job, of only librarian jobs were out there.  I suppose that's about as useful as saying that I'm thankful for how delicious unicorns would be if only they existed, but hey, I said I was going to say something positive.

A Matter of Chance

I mentioned before how I followed the path of least resistance and more or less stumbled ass-first into this career path.  But that still doesn’t explain exactly why librarian was my last-minute desperation choice.  There has to be some reason that was on the top of the pile when I reached into my hat and grabbed one.  There is.

I blame Vladimir Nabokov.

Allow me to back up.  I’ve always been a good reader.  In fact, I was unusually good.  In kindergarten the teacher tested us on our reading level by pulling us into the hall individually and asking us to read.  She gave me the book and I read it.  Really read it.  Not sounding out words, and not pointing to the picture of the tiger and saying “kitty!,” I read it fluently.  She thought I must have had that book at home and knew it by heart, so she gave me another.  And another.  And another.  Then she finally realized that I was actually reading those books.  She was shocked; she had never seen that before from someone my age.

I would go on to take the ACTs and score in the 99^th percentile for reading and 97^th or 98^th for grammar.

Don’t get me wrong, I suck enough at math and science to balance that out so I don’t consider myself a genius by any means.  I’m not bragging, just giving you background.

The point is, I was good at reading right from the start.  And I loved reading.  I loved it right up to the age of 13 or 14, when I let that hobby slide in favor of other hobbies (not all of which involved my genitalia).  It wasn’t until the Summer before college that I began to read for pleasure again.  Although, it wasn’t really pleasure I was doing it for, to be honest.  It was simply because I wanted to be viewed as intelligent, and intelligent people should be able to list well-known books they’d read, or be ready at any moment to talk about what they were reading at the time.  So I began reading some of those books that intelligent people “should” have under their belt.  Catcher in the Rye, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Moby Dick.  You know, those kinds of books.  I didn’t dislike them, but I can’t say I loved them.  Then I read A Clockwork Orange, and that sparked something in me.  I actually enjoyed reading it; I found it fun.  For once since I was 13, reading really was pleasurable and not just something I “should” be doing.  But when I returned the book to the library, I still felt the same as always.  I still merely felt proud that I had another well-known book under my belt.

The next book I checked out was Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.

There is no hyperbole in stating that this book changed my life.  It was beautiful, so so beautiful.  The language, the flowery prose, it was art.  It wasn’t entertainment or an idea or a conversation piece, it was, simply, art, in all its raging beauty.  When I finished and went to put it in the library return drop, I didn’t feel a trace of that pride from having “another one under my belt.”  That didn’t matter anymore.  All I felt was sadness for the fact that it was over, that I couldn’t immerse myself in it forever.  It was hard from me to open up my fingers and let the book drop.  It actually took a few seconds to bring myself to let it go.

It’s almost scary to think that, as much as Lolita changed my life, it’s not even my favorite novel by Nabokov.  I’ve read 7 of them, and almost every single one of his short stories.  My favorite, Pale Fire, is one of the few books I actually own, and I have read it almost countless times now.

Vladimir Nabokov is why I have a passion for the printed word.  He’s why I hold books sacred.  He’s why the library, and what it represents, is special to me.  And if not for that, the library wouldn’t have been the place I settled on when forced to decide where I wanted to spend my life.  Where would the path of least resistance have taken me if not for that?  I have no idea.

For a long time, Nabokov was the reason I was happy.  He changed my life in more ways than what I just discussed.  He made me happy.  No, not happy.  Content.  Reading his short stories inspired something in me, made me feel like I could feel “at peace,” and satisfied, whatever was going on.  That as long as I could find and appreciate the beauty around me, it would be enough.

As you can see, this did not last.  Now that the real world had ground me down, and now that I don’t have time to read Nabokov’s works anymore anyway, and now that I’ve become the failure I am, the glow of that contentment has faded.  Nabokov made me serenely happy, and then in time he made me a depressed, miserable wreck.   

So I guess you can say I know what it’s like to have been in love.

Would I change my path if I could?

Sometimes I sit alone and wonder about what could have been, about what could have changed or been done differently.  I found myself where I am by following the path of least resistance.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do after high school, so I took some scholarship and loan money to go to college.  I didn’t have a post-college plan, but I didn’t know what else to do, so putting the decision off for four more years was easier.  I chose a pretty not-outstanding major as far as jobs go because I still didn’t know what I wanted to do by my sophomore year.  That’s why, instead of picking anything practical, I picked what was interesting.  Everyone said I’d find out what I wanted to do when I got to college.  They lied to me.

Then came time to graduate from college, and the only exit plan I had come up with was “steal crap on my way out.”  It turns out that dry erase markers couldn’t pay off my student loans, however, so it was back to the drawing board.  Still no idea what to do, I kept going on the path of least resistance.  Library school.  Sure, what the hell, why not?  It didn’t seem like a hard job, I liked reading and libraries, and I didn’t know what else to do.  If I didn’t have such a horrific, paranoid fear of bugs, I honestly would have just been homeless by choice.  That’s how much I had no idea what to do.  Instead I chose library school, again doing the easy thing.

What if I’d done something different?  I still wonder what my life would be like—if I’d actually have one—if only I ever really wanted to do anything in particular.  If, instead of throwing a dart when I had to make a decision, I had been really into the idea of being a plumber, or dentist, or ninja.  If at any point in my life I would have had some burning passion.  Instead, I identify very much with the protagonist from Office Space.  We were supposed to imagine what we’d do if we could do anything we wanted for the rest of our lives, and that was supposed to be our career choice.  The problem is, there’s just nothing we wanted to do all of our lives. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do want to be a librarian.  I’ve enjoyed the work so far.  There are some parts I want to leave behind, and some parts I need to leave behind, and hopefully one day I’ll get the kind of library job I want so I’ll be able to.  But I do want to be a librarian.

But what if there had been a real passion in my life?  What if I were one of those kids who wanted to be a veterinarian from the age of 5 and worked my whole life with that goal in mind?  What if I swam against the current that took me to library school and ended up anywhere else?

The only problem is, even now when I try to imagine it, I can’t think of what that other path could possibly be.  The truth is, I never did have an interest in being a plumber or an exotic dancer.  What good is it to ask myself what I would have done differently when I still can’t even imagine how?  Even now I don’t know what my other option could possibly have been.  If I could hit reset and live it over again, I can’t imagine what I’d do instead of this.  

I guess it doesn’t help to imagine anyway.  After all, I’m a librarian.  I’m a librarian, writing this future blog post at 9:20 PM on a Monday, October 29^th, wrapped in a blanket despite being a little too warm, while avoiding grading some essays.  Just like I was always going to be.  And then in a few weeks or maybe over a month, I’ll post this. Whenever I do it, it’ll be when it was always going to happen.  There were different outcomes possible, but none of them were ever going to happen.  It may not be true that anything is meant to be, but everything that happens will be the only way it was ever going to happen.

I’ll never know what my other options were, and I was always going to be a hopeless, failed librarian.