Silence

I've gone a little while without updating my blog.  Don't worry, I still have plenty of scribbled notes of ideas for blog discussions.  I just haven't been interested in doing them lately for the same reason I haven't been very diligent in job hunting for librarian jobs lately.

When I first started writing about the impossibility of getting a job in this field, the advice I gave to myself, yet refused to accept, was "Give Up."  And while I haven't done this yet, the sentiment has crept deeper into my bones lately.  It's so hard to motivate myself to spend hours of my time going through job listings and applying to at least the lowest hanging fruit when more than six years of experience is telling m it's a waste of time, and my life will never move on from the stalled place it's at now.

For the past few months I've been begrudgingly doing the part-part-part time job I do have and then coming home and escaping into books or video games, not even bothering to waste my time applying anywhere.  I've just been feeling too defeated to pull myself up lately.

If you're not in this position it's probably so easy to say: "oh, but you need to apply, you never know!"  or "don't Give Up!"  Or "you may as well keep trying, no harm in trying after all!"  To you, I challenge you to go six straight years failing at something and not go through patches where you're just not motivated.  When you've had Mike Tyson beating you senseless for six years, there will be times when you lie on the mat for longer than needed, just to get a break.

My lack of interest in my career has also, as you have seen, translated to a lack of interest in talking about my career.  I still have plenty to say, though.  And really, that's sad.  I didn't know when I started two years ago that I'd have over two years worth of material to rant about regarding my own personal failure in life, and the death of the American dream.  No, not death.  Zombification.  It has died, but shuffles on as a cruel mockery of those who cared for it, devouring them in giant handfuls.  I don't know what to make of the fact that I've now used two analogies of fighting an opponent who likes to bite people.  Point is, it is appalling  that there's so much to say about how terrible one specific problem is.  Two years and still so much left to say about the futility of life for anyone trying to start a life for the first time post November, 2008.

And it will be said.  A few days ago I managed to bring myself to skim the job postings half-heartedly, and this should mark the start of more searching, more applications, and more posts about just how fucked this dead field is.

Enjoy.

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.