2011: or the busiest year of my life...

My friend Kristin Tennant wrote a great "what do you think about 2011, what do you hope for 2012" post, which included these great questions. Since I was thinking of doing something for the end of the year, I stole her questions:

1. What experiences most shaped you in 2011?

2. What is something you learned (or learned to do) in 2011?

3. What is something you want to learn to do in 2012?

4. Is there a hurt, frustration or fear that you’d like to heal/let go of in 2012?

5. What inspired or encouraged you in 2011?

6. What gift could you use to inspire and encourage others in 2012?

7. What do you want to experience more of in your life this next year?

8. What do you want to give/share more of?

9. Is there a word that sums up 2011 for you?

10. Is there a word you want to carry with you through 2012?

[plus one] 11. What book, movie, or show really jazzed your year?

***

1. Most shaped me in 2011:

Working on my PhD application. (It's in, btw. Now we just wait until the end of February when I hear if they want to interview me.) Even as I was working on re-writing the article in January, or working on the presentation in October, or studying for the GREs, all of those were cumulative work to the final December 15 deadline.

2. Learned to do this year:

Work a deadline. Discover that I do my best work in the morning, so work then, and veg in the evening. Keep the laptop in the other room. Separate laptop (work) time from (veg) TV time, but that when it comes down to the last minute, I can keep my tush in my chair until I'm done.

3. Want to learn next year:

Create systems. I started using a 7 day pill box in 2010. It has made my life easier. (I take pills 4 times a day.) I have started to learn (see #2) to break items down into pieces, and would like to create systems for paying bills, doing dishes, doing laundry, cutting clutter. I have learned in the past couple of weeks that just doing dishes for 5 minutes (or while something is cooking in the microwave) makes a big difference. If I only did housework for 5 minutes a day...I have tried all the self-help, reduce clutter books and none of them have worked. I have to figure out my own system, one that works for me.

4. Fear that you want to heal?

Two:

• letting go of my sister (she got married!) and learning to love her husband (I do like him a lot. I see how they are a great couple, but I'm not "there" yet.)
  
• Re-learning that I am enough. The PhD process scratched a surface of insecurity...what if I don't get in, what if this isn't the right path, what if, what if. I would like to be able to say, I'm enough. Whatever happens, it's going to be okay. (Not that there's anything wrong with being scared, but I don't want the fear to rule me.)

5. Inspired you this year?

JUST DO IT. When I went to speak to the woman in charge of children's library programs at the Library School here in town, she said, try to get published, try to present. In 2010-2011, I did both (one of each.)

6. Gift to encourage others in 2012?

CUPCAKES, of course!

7. Experience more in 2012?

More time with friends. In person. Face to face.

8. Give/Share more of in 2012?

This one gave me pause...I don't think "writing" is the right answer, but it's what I came up with.

9. Word that sums up 2011?

BUSY.*

10. Word that you want to carry into/with you in 2012?

Acceptance.

11. Movie/Book/Show?

Bones. (Show) I am totally obsessed with Bones, the same way I was totally obsessed with SATC when I first discovered it back in 200?.

____________

*January: Polished my first scholarly publication

February: Sister got engaged

March: I got the flu, I picked out a maid-of-honor dress

April: I gave my sister a bridal shower (big thanks to cousin Kiki and Mom!)

May: prep for Summer Reading, New York for unco11, blasted cold that developed into third sinus infection for 2011.

June/July: Summer Reading

August: learn I have food allergies, prep for the wedding, the wedding

September: family vacation, study for, take the GREs

October: my first professional library presentation, sinus surgery

November: Recover from surgery, research for my PhD application essays, Thanksgiving, my 40th birthday

December: finish my PhD application essays, Christmas.

things i will say...

...when I become a professor at library school.

Raise your hands if you like books. Good, good. Raise your hands if you like people. Good, good.
Now put them down and think about this: do you like people when they are nice to you or do you like grumpy people? Because that's what it is to be a "people person." You like people even when they are not giving you the correct information, when they are acting ignorant, when they need help irrationally. This cannot be taught. If you do not like those people, you might as well decide now to become something else when you grow up. Because even if you become a cataloger and sit in your basement office, you will have to deal with librarians. And sometimes, you will have to sit at the reference desk.

***

I dream about these things, I do. I wake up and create these scenarios, of things I will tell my students. Since I most likely will never have a son or daughter, and won't be taking my nieces for long drives in Pittsburgh, I will probably never be able to explain why you change lanes after the U haul (because people turn in that lane) or why if you get a green light, you keep going and turn at the next intersection, not at Elfinwild. But if I get into grad school, I will get a chance to share my from the front lines info about working in a library.

Yesterday I watched a really awful "customer service" video. It was one of those 17 minute deals, short enough so that you could pause it a few times to talk about things and still not go over a half hour, something you could show before you had a meeting. I sort of remembered that I had watched it before when I saw the accompanying worksheet. This guy was trying to cover every transaction in a library and show the right and wrong ways. I bet this guy has a similar video for cardiac nurses. Since I'm trying to watch these videos and write reviews as a form of comp time (read: work in my PJs) as I recover from the sinus surgery, I decided to research some YouTubes. I found a 6 minute video that gave the same basic information, but gave heart reasons. Because in the end, customer service is not about the 3 P's or remembering mnemonic phrases. It is about the heart. Do you like your job enough to respect the people you work for and with? Will you help the unhelpful? Because if no, then maybe you should make a career change.

***
So yes, I'm recovering from the surgery. I worked 4.5 hours at work and 1 hour at home, which included doing Mother Goose (where I sing with babies and their mothers) twice. This morning, after the most bizarre mix of dreams, I woke up at 9:43. Since I nodded off around 12:30, that would be over 9 hours. Which is about what I've been sleeping, lately. Roughly 9 hours.

I would write more, but I actually have a lot of errands before work today.

• Call admissions person.
• Go to Pharmacy, ask about a medication
• Go to Pscyhiatrist appt, ask about that medication
• Drive to work
• Lunch (somewhere in there.)
• Work at least 4 hours.

And when I come home, a fresh new episode of BONES, the premiere of the seventh season!!

(Bones is what I watched as a part of my recovery. There was one channel I watched, the bones only bones only bones. Somehow it soothed me.)

Sarah Louise goes to the cafe

Apparently, I am not having luck with the e part of cafe. (Alt +0233 doesn't want to do its magic today.)

Learning, learning. I'm not going to fuss over it now, I'm actually writing this from a national chain cafe that has wireless!

Why, you ask, the exclamation point? Don't you do that all the time, SL?

Why no. This may be my first time...I'm pretty sure it is. We are experiencing Pittsburgh spring, which means 75 F by morning, 45 F by evening, showers with hail somewhere in between. It's why Channel 11 calls their weather forecast "Severe Weather." Since I live in a garret (read: third floor walk-up, attic of a 100 year old house with precious little insulation), the heat is abhorrent and today is NOT the day to be in my apartment, washing dishes. So I must find another occupation.

I've been thinking, as per usual. These days, my favorite subject to obsess over is grad school. Will I be in the Midwest, Texas, or the South? (Texas is South, but also a place unto itself.)

I am not naming school names on purpose, so please don't comment on them if you know where I'm talking about. I really really want to go to the Midwest, as the school in question is highly regarded in research...which is what I want to do.

I play a game with myself when I'm at work on the reference desk and it's quiet. What would it be like to live in x town, going to x school? So I've been researching the professors. What have they published lately, what projects are they interested in. Because apparently that is the most important component in getting into a particular school. Do your research interests match theirs.

All along, I was thinking Midwest, and then my main research interest changed. And then I found out how competitive PhD programs are in general, and this one in particular. And then I got scared and opened to the Southern schools (yes, including Texas.) I am not a warm weather lover, and our family is more a Northeast/Midwest family, so I hadn't really thought I wanted to change that. (A creature of habit, I am.)

The thing is, the more I try on other places, the more I want to go to the Midwest, and the more I am valuing the things studied there.

Learning for learning's sake seems somehow frivolous, to a daughter of a diplomat and a early elementary teacher, who are now both retired and advocating for the conservancy of monarch butterflies. Those are noble professions, with results that can be seen, after a few years, or decades. What is the tangible good of studying St. Nicholas magazine, which hasn't been published since the 1940s? But it is what I want to do. Digging, and digging more, makes me happy, as I find bits here, bits there.

And, I think, if I can get that coveted PhD, get an academic post, maybe my students will be the ones that will do the "practical" jobs. Maybe I will do something that will bear fruit in decades.

Following your bliss is scary.

(Oh, look, it's 11:17!)

Um, SL, yes, do you have to be somewhere?

No, not yet. But the home my parents owned for most of my life was 1117 "something" Avenue. And when ever it was 11:17, one of us would exclaim, it's 11:17! It's a silly thing, but it made us happy.

Outside, the clouds are moving across the sky. The rain isn't posted till the evening, but I can't believe it will wait that long, there feels like weather is in the air. To be prepared, I am not wearing my good shoes, they are inside my boots which are in the front seat of my car.

Back to research. While it seems frivolous, there is a reason why libraries exist, above doing preschool storytime. And if research is what makes me putter like a...puttering person, happy as a lark, and there are places I can do this...and my research will make me a scholar, which will in turn make me able to mold young minds...it's a lot to twist your mind around, a girl who saw library school as an opening to a profession, much like going to plumbing school makes you a plumber.

To go to school...to study? That's what undergrads do. That's what my English degree was for. But now I, single and needing to support myself, must find something more practical, which is why I became a librarian. But it turns out that I'd much rather be DOING research than helping others do research (although I enjoy that too.)

I need to bend my brain around the fact that it is possible my dissertation will never be a published book beyond the university library...that it will not aid the cure of Polio, solve an economic crisis, or save an endangered species.

But haven't the women I always admired been women who had doctorates? That's another post...I have somewhere to be, my alarm on my cell phone just went off.

As Kim at All Consuming says, MTC (more to come...)

"Weather forecast for tonight: dark."

(George Carlin)

Today at church I learned from a physicist that it's important that we are at a dark corner of the Milky Way, which is one of the darkest galaxies. Dark allows us to see stars, and dark is also important for growth. Apparently we are one of the only galaxies still growing stars.

I thought about this, in reference to things I understand (read: not black holes). Tulips grow underneath the dirt before they break ground. Human babies gestate in the dark for hopefully 9 months before they see the light. Often a "dark night of the soul" is needed before someone hits a truth, something that brings them into the light.

Today was a convergence of sorts: not only was Michigan Sally in town (yay!) which took me to Bellefield, but a dear friend was in town for her brother's birthday, as were a couple who has moved to Guatemala. So not only did I get to see regular Bellefield faces that I would see any Sunday I showed up, I also got to see folks that I otherwise never see. During one of the songs, I cried. Did I ever think, that 17 year old me, that saw Bellefield and said, oh, maybe I'll go to church there on Sunday, that at 39 I would be returning to visit, still living in Pittsburgh, single, and contemplating a PhD? I didn't even want to be a *librarian* at 17.

The pastor who spoke has a PhD in physics, and he described a PhD as being tested to the point where there's no point in testing you in that subject again. He compared the Christian life as living under a kind professor who tries to guide you the way you should go.

So, two weeks of church in a row, that's good. (After 4 weeks off, due to first to sickness and then a ideological crisis.) I went to the Open Door last week, and had dinner after with Maddy. I'm taking my therapist's advice to go to the Open Door for a month and see if it's where I want to be. (A year ago, it wasn't, but things change, people change.)

When I showed up at the OD last week, the phrase came to my mind, "We're in the question and question portion of this life. No answers right now, just questions." So when people asked me how I was, that's what I said. And they got it. The OD is peopled with new parents, PhD students, MFA graduates...so they get that the questions sometimes don't go away, for a very long time.

I'm sick this weekend. I caught a virus which has had me "grounded" since Thursday afternoon, when, after a day of Summer Reading training with all my children's librarian peeps, I came home and slept for 3 hours. When I woke up with a sore throat, I thought, I guess this isn't just "daylight savings" tired. I took Friday and Saturday off work. I'd hoped to go in this afternoon, when I'd have the office to myself, but I'm still winded, and the work will wait. Somewhere between last night and this morning at church, I forgave myself. I was mad at myself for getting sick. I was mad at myself for losing my cool earlier this week. I was mad at myself for not knowing which church to go to.

And this weekend surprised me with some delights: I became friends with a twitter friend on FB, and got a friend request from another twitter friend. Then a woman who knew me sort of from Bellefield and later the OD, found me on twitter, and it turns out she knows some of my dearest twitter friends. (She now lives in rural PA, darn it, but she is closer than some of my twitter friends in Illinois, Iowa, and Oklahoma.)

AND at Thursday's training, I met up with a PhD candidate from Pitt, who already has a job after graduation at Simmons, proving that there ARE academic jobs out there. I have her email, and once I feel better, I'll shoot her a note to get together for coffee. She was thrilled to meet me, which is always a good sign.

As I write this, I'm listening to a tied Pens/Panthers hockey game. Tied is the norm, anymore, with the Pens. For ages, we just were losing tie games, but at least we got the point, and all of a sudden, we are winning, so we get two points. We don't have a playoff spot yet. Before the game, the awards were given, and Marc-Andre Fleury got the MVP award. And does he ever deserve it. He got another award, I can't remember what it was. It was strange not hearing Sidney Crosby, the Penguin's captain, get any of the awards, but he's missed so much of the season, hasn't played since January 5th due to a concussion early in the year, possibly from both the Winter Classic against the Washington Capitals on New Year's Day and the January 5th game with the Tampa Bay Lightening.

****

WE WON!! (Shootout, goals by Kovalev and Neal.)

And at 4:00 p.m., having been awake all day, I'm ready for a nap.