Category: community

anxiety, community, home

The last three months

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To my dedicated base of readers: happy holidays. I myself did not get to fully enjoy Thanksgiving, nor celebrate Chanukah, nor celebrate Christmas. New Year’s Eve, I was bedridden, recovering from a 3-week hospital stay. I’m not ashamed of why I was hospitalized, but at the same time I do not feel like going into it now on the wide-open internet, but I will say I physically suffered from being in the hospital. I pray you had a less-shitty (which is to say less 2020) holiday season and you got to see your people safely and that everyone was in good spirits and good health.

My illness (and two hospital stays) means that in addition to having been away from blogging (but you knew that), I’ve also been off from work for almost three months. For a fun thought experiment you can try at home, try taking the largest source of empowerment and self-worth from a person with anxiety. Hilarity does not ensue. I love my job and the people that work with me, and I am unmoored without them.

The anxiety over wanting to return to work was nothing new; I’ve had anxiety for at least four years! What’s new is that it faded. I don’t feel anxiety because I am resigned. I know there is nothing I can do or say to speed up the return process. What positive updates, you may say! Not quite. I am numb with how much has been taken from me or otherwise lost. I physically cannot give any more fucks. The fucks have run out. This also translates to not really wanting to talk to or see others. I feel a sense of connection to family and friends who have reached out to check on me, but I am hyper aware of people who knew I was sick and did not reach out. (That said, my phone entirely died during the hospital stay and I have zero record of anything sent to me most of December.)

Despite the many loved individuals reaching out to me, I’m struggling with feeling community-less. Part of this is covid.. there is no in-person group activity happening at all in my circle of friends. Of my two main communities, one community won’t let me back in just yet, and the other I chose to step back from in November. Can I still be the angry librarian if I’m not working in a library? (I hope so, because WordPress just auto-renewed for another year.) I chose to quit because pandemic hours meant I had to go in for one two-hour shift each week and it was too much effort to juggle, and I will be happy to work there again once our hours normalize. It feels so different walking in now, but some of that feeling is due to pandemic/masks/plexiglass screens. I know that I am still part of the community, even though technically my role has changed. Now, instead of fearing that I’m the last to know library goings on, I actually am the last to know.

And for the first time ever, I’m okay with being the last to know (or, gasp!, not knowing). I’ve disconnected. I don’t even feel the anxiety over politics (thanks, Obama) because we are on our way to making the country operate like a rational entity again. Oh, and, I haven’t read the Skimm since November. It’s a wonder what being uninformed can free a person from! I was by no means a news junkie, but even the one political email I opened per day was stressful as hell. I’ll dip my toes back into the water eventually, but for right now, I’ve eliminated or disassembled many of my triggers. Medication helps, too, so I should not pretend I’ve reached this non-anxious state alone.

In summary, the last 3 months of my life have been not great. I have struggled with how to talk and write about something I don’t want to talk or write about, and this is intentionally vague to support that effort. It goes without saying, but I wanted to emphasize again that last year was a terrible year for traditional community-building methods, and I still miss our old way of life. I entered the hospital (still) a nervous wreck about the pandemic and exposure, and left as a person who often forgets to bring a mask on the way to run errands. Cured, or broken? I write to again remind people to check on their squad. Just because things are “looking up” does not necessarily mean all people feel up. I write to remind others and also hold myself accountable, as many people have reached out to me and I feel guilty only texting them back because I don’t want to talk on the phone. I write to say that yes I am jubilant about Biden and Harris in the White House but even that joy isn’t enough to motivate me when I have absolutely nothing to do. Biden and Harris can’t be my workout buddies, nor can they decide whether I do instacart or go to the damn grocery store myself.

So please excuse me as I go prepare for my day (yes, it is 11:30am). I will shower, put on real pants and go to the holy land of Trader Joe’s. God willing they will have the fancy gluten free muffins and I will even allow myself a seltzer purchase (and maybe, too, I’ll take a peek at the greeting cards). This is truly the one thing I have to do today. Here’s hoping I can find the motivation to pull it off. Though honestly, I might do my taxes instead out of procrastination. Tonight I’m meeting one of my beautiful friends for a virtual chat as we watch Uncorked, a Netflix Party of 2.

Slowly but surely I’m finding ways to pass my time as I enter week 3 of the attempt to reenter work. This month has been nowhere near as hard as being in the hospital, so I can’t hyperbolize, but I’m definitely not responding to the situation well. Send mail, send texts, even send thoughts and prayers. Anything is better than nothing!

community, joy, meditation

Cruisin’ around town

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Yesterday, I bought a new bike! I have to admit, I haven’t tried to own one in a long time–where would I store it? Where would I ride it, and in what free time? The last time I owned a bike was the Jeep bike (Jeep makes bikes?? Not a great sign…) I bought when starting grad school–it weighed a ton, the seat kept sinking no matter what I tried to fix it, and New Jersey drivers are often terrifying when I am also in a 2,000 pound metal box so no thank you, I would not be riding an airbag-less stick to class.

I got rid of the bike. Grad school would not mean a return to the joys of my childhood and riding around all day, earning a stripe up my back after it rained. In the pre-coronial world, space was limited, I was averse to the elements, and I depleted my energy by working all the jobs.

Fast forward to now, and the world has changed. I have time. For the first part of quarantine, I dated a good person who likes bike riding and invited me to join by providing a spare bike of his and a helmet. I saw how simple it was to get up and go outside, that there are paths everywhere, and that riding on the streets is okay if the streets are wide enough. The risk isn’t absent, but minimal and manageable.

But I also discovered that bike handles, much like the computer, stress my wrists, and my old-lady back needs more of an upright seat. Surely, this type of bike is harder to come by.

Nope! It’s called a cruiser, and I am not the only one whose back needs to not bend over for the bike riding. And walking in to the used bike store yesterday, there were many of them! And now one of them is mine. I didn’t even notice until getting to the park that it has a perfect, functioning, loud and cheerful bell, and I squealed with joy. This might just be the return to that level of childhood glee.

I wasn’t actively looking before, and since this was the first place I visited that actually sold them, I wasn’t expecting to find this perfect (to me) bike. After all, there is something of a bike shortage–stores are sold out, and there was quite a line to get in to the secondhand place. And yet, despite the expected scarcity, there were plenty to choose from. It was practically a bike emporium. I have been through enough bikes that didn’t fit to know what I needed–I found mine really quickly, but something about it spoke to me! The choosing wasn’t hard. The cruising, the enjoying it wasn’t hard.

The practical stuff (ie. the transporting it home) was hard. I’ve watched my dad install the trunk bike rack hundreds of times, but not in a while, and I doubt I’d ever helped. It’s harder than it looks! But I was thankful for the providence that I needed one, and the used bike place happened to have (only!) one to sell. The universe was looking out for me. Despite a clumsy installation, the marvels of science allowed the bike to not fall off the car before the trail, or before going to the local bike shop (support local businesses, even when they are sold out of bikes!) and buying a lock (and having the wonderful employee adjust the bike rack).

And so, though working from home has compromised my wrists and I certainly need more leg strength before completing longer or more challenging rides, I now have the capability to get out there and move, to feel the breeze on my skin.

All this to say, after many months of mostly staying in one place, I’m getting out and about in safe ways. After many months of zoom, my kundalini class now meets in person, outdoors! It’s a half-hour drive, so not a chance in hell I’m biking there, but it’s even more majestic and centering under the shade of tall trees and to the tune of frogs and bugs chirping, and the day I ventured to the new location was humid as hell but full of bright blue sky.

I appreciated the meditation and stretching and the company of people I hadn’t seen in person since March, but I also appreciated the drive there and home. I passed the farm that has the fall festival where my best friend and I bought peach wine and apple cider donuts and locally grown blueberries. I passed my favorite little intersection with the weird-angled streets, greenery, and cute farm/houses on my way to a job where I used to be miserable. I knew the “caution: fox crossing” sign would still be at that sweet curve in the road just beyond and I hoped, as ever, that people were taking care and slowing down. I almost missed the turn in to this special little oasis because of how overgrown and non-commercial the winding gravel driveway is, and I oozed gratitude for having found my way past, through, around everything in order to get there.

Yesterday was bike day, and today it is raining and cold and my poor little bike is locked up out in the rain. Things at present locally and nationally are not looking “up,” not getting back to normal, and everything is perpetually in flux at best, but I’m trying to find ways to move (and sit still.. #meditation) that work for my body and brain during this phase of treading water. I know my next purchase will be a bike cover. Dare I say, the outlook actually looks pretty good!

anxiety, be a better human, books, community, empathy, family, giving, kindness, social media, strangers

Break [it] down

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Though it seems like in many ways, we are getting used to the ‘new normal,’ there are plenty of ways this drastic change continues to be upsetting. My friends continue to have panic attacks and breakdowns of all sizes, and my empathizer heart is hurting. On a small scale, all my basic needs are met, and yet.. Fear looms large, and it blows my mind/fuels my rage/makes me sad that our food system is so broken that more people than average (!!) are going hungry right now in this country of plenty. I’m reassured that our quality of air worldwide is improved due to fewer cars on the roads and less pollution from closed-down industry. But more on my hippie tears at a later date.

I’m going to write about what has been helping me to cope, and what is inspiring me to change. As sometimes happens, I read the perfect book at the perfect time. After all, how many of us are simply struggling with how Not to Do the Things? How to deal with the limitations/unavailability of most everything but the virtual world.

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How to Do Nothing made the hairs on my arms stand up. This woman artfully (she is an artist, after all) emphasized that our culture has largely lost our connection to place and our need for context. This is true on an ecological level; we need to get outside more–into our surroundings, to become familiar with the land that we occupy and the other creatures that also do. This grounding/contextualizing shows us that we are not the only ones here. We are part of a system and the system deserves our attention and respect. 

This need for context also appears in our social [media] interactions. Modern comforts and technology have made it so we can curate our daily lived experiences and only have to interact with people who agree with us on nearly all points. [Information silos, old news.] The media lives on sound bites that are designed to enrage and distract us, further driving us into our polarized opinion camps. I took the time to manually transcribe this part of her book because it spoke to me. She states that if we only interact with people who agree with us we:

“never run the risk of being surprised, challenged, or changed. Never seeing anything outside of ourselves. Including our own privilege. That’s not to say we have nothing to gain from those we have many things in common with, on paper. If we don’t expand our attention outside of that sliver we live in an I-it world where nothing has meaning outside of its value and relation to us. And we are less prone to the encounters with those who turn us upside down and reorganize our universe… Those who stand to change us significantly, should we allow it. Of course having encounters entails risks that not everyone is willing to take.”

Holy wow, yes. Now is the time for change. If you haven’t done Anything Different this entire quarantine, who even are you? It is a time for thought and discussion. For dismantling the egocentric views we hold. To interrupt our regularly scheduled programming and do Something different instead. Something caring, something creative. Something revolutionary. 

Because when I’m worried about the Fate of the World and all the big, Capital Letter Things, I have to focus on specific actions to take. I have to break it down into manageable, actionable pieces. What can I do? What effect does staring at my phone, scrolling through instagram or facebook really do for me? What can I do instead? Do I really need to buy more clothing/home goods/products? I understand the temptation to hunker down and feverishly, anxiously repeat the usual distraction purchasing patterns (and I am very guilty of doing this myself). But if you have the expendable income to spend right now, I hope you consider others. I hope you donate to organizations that feed and care for others. Because just as thinking too large-scale is harmful, so is thinking too small-scale. Think outside of yourself, and consider that this is a terrible time for everyone, and that your help for others will help them and you. No, I do not mean to minimize your suffering. I am just saying we are all suffering. And suggesting that you contextualize it, and allow it to serve you and others. Allow your suffering to help Something. Ask for help. Reach out. Do something different.

So I’m doing some familiar things, and some new ones. I’m talking more than usual on the phone with my family. I’m reading. I’m wildly busy at work, so I’m doing overall less mental berating of myself. I’m playing Words with Friends, going on walks, fighting with the skunk who keeeeeps spraying directly outside my window (not all nature is good, I concede), cooking, baking, or just making macaroni from a box and not judging myself about it. I’m not immune to the simple allure of tv (but try to be social and talk about it afterwards). I love exchanging letters with people, so I’m trying to do a lot of letter writing when I’m in the mood, especially because I know people like getting fun mail. Because I’m not always in the mood to be my best self. I’m trying to work out/journal/meditate one per day, but sometimes I am lazy and cranky and don’t. I have virtual therapy appointments, and I’m still moody and easily irritated and mad at myself for trying to multitask (usually looking at my phone). I too do not particularly trust the person who is living their best life at this weird, isolated time. But if that’s you, good for you!

This time is unique in that it is allowing us more than ever before to hone in on what matters, and to opt out of the parts of our society that do not serve us (or anyone). It is providing us the opportunity to help others, to reach out and strengthen personal ties, time to heal ourselves and our brains and how we think of ourselves (as helpless or capable, isolated or part of a community). There is not much else to do other than go outside and walk or run, familiarizing ourselves with the species in the area. Noticing that we are not alone. You have neighbors, and postal workers, and all sorts of animals and plant life around you (some of which might be blooming these days). It’s a time to  make the best of what’s around. It’s not easy, but there’s no getting around it. We have to go through!

anxiety, community, coworkers, meditation, talking

19: What I’m Hearing

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At some point within the last month, I have been both on a roll and in a funk, and today marks day 19 of a 19-day streak without a day off (3×5-day workweek + 2 straight weekends = 19).  Oh, and, the world is ending.

The weird: a skunk sprayed directly outside my bedroom window. Three. Weeks. Straight. Always on Sunday! The smell was so strong that it woke me from total sleep. And it lingered. No, lingered is too gentle a word. It sat, chokingly heavy in the air in my bedroom. Stayed for almost a full week despite 24-hour air purifier and vinegar water to draw it out. I was convinced I was wearing the smell out of the house. JUST when my room stank only faintly, it would strike again. For three weeks. It was the closest thing to torture I’ve ever endured, and if it were an interrogation, I would have cracked. My favorite place (my bed) was not relaxing, and it was not safe from this nastiness.

The good: I was feeling kind of bummed out when I wasn’t hearing from a couple close friends. For some reason, it is still unfamiliar to me that even though I reach out when I have a lot going on (because I need to be out of my head and into the world) close friends  might want to retreat from the world and go into their heads. The good came from finally making contact with said close friends, understanding where they were coming from, and spending loads of quality time together. GOOD, aka the calm before the storm.

This good was influenced by reading an empowering book about diet/health: Brain Maker by David Perlmutter, the author of the book that made me go gluten-free (Grain Brain!). More fermented foods (hello, kombucha!) and more healthy fats (hello, avocados!) and I was feeling calm for the first time in forever.

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Trust Ferg to recommend only the best books

During this time of joy and such, I attended meditation and the leader guiding the meditation had a cough. As I sat there, I was still peaceful despite his intermittent startling cough. I remarked to myself about the unconditional positive regard I have for this man, and how with my “good list” of people I will waive annoyance that readily pops up in response to the same behaviors by any other person. How do I get more people onto the good list? If nothing else, that would spare me more annoyance…

The bad: Just when I had gotten into a rhythm of working out at lunchtime, our employee workout classes were canceled. All fun has been canceled this week. At first, I pouted, sad that this was “taken from me.”

Not only is one of my coping mechanisms not available, but the anxiety is ramping up. Just when I had finally found places to hold end-of-year events, now we are unsure if they will take place. Almost everything I have been working on is now on hold because of drastic changes to the very core of the student experience. There are known cases of coronavirus in my community, and I work two places in the community. In short, people at work are freaking the fuck out. All week, I’ve been hearing about how there is no toilet paper at the stores, and that people are stockpiling, preparing for being on a multiple week lockdown. I generally do not fall prey to public panic, and I typically resent the behaviors and mindsets behind them. In short, people outside of work are freaking the fuck out.

And instead of resenting those people, and instead of bitching about every change in policy, and while only minimally judging (because unless you plan on eating toilet paper, there is no need for you to purchase that much of it).. I’m listening.

I’m hearing a lot of rational, caring people on conference calls trying to mitigate and support others through a messy situation. I’m hearing a lot of compassion and a lot of flexibility from my supervisors when I mess up various things because my mind is not at full strength or focus this week. I’m hearing my coworkers tell me their children are feeling a lot of fear and anxiety. And that they are too. It helps to know I’m not alone (but honestly how could I be?).

And I listened to myself today, and advocated for what I needed (aka asked not to come in to the library due to the anxiety I was feeling). And I was met with support! It was great!

Since the new year, I thought we wouldn’t have to hear about 19 ever again. It was a trying year, and it seems to be extending its disasters into 2020. This public health scare is crazy, and it requires precautions that make sense. I am not alone in my fun being taken away. Pro/college sports, theater, comedy.. it’s all put on pause. And though social distancing is extremely hard and uncomfortable and sad for me, maybe it forces me to really take care of myself. Yes, working out is now part of my mental health regime. Yes, I need it and yes, it will be unavailable to me in organized groups for the foreseeable future. Yes, I may still brave the yoga studio, and yes, I may choose to still go to the grocery store or out to eat (one or the other!).

Even though I would like to consume less, I need to be a part of a social fabric, and saw this poem today and love it so much. It reframed this whole stay-at-home crisis for me. Obviously, when people get sick, it is scary, but my anxiety lessened when I thought of the precautions in these gentle, respectful terms rather than scary, disease terms.

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community, joy, let it go, librarians

Private in Public

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Sometimes at work, we feel more like babysitters, or referees to the public. Our library offers beautiful study rooms, with collaborative tech that many ignore in favor of doodling on the whiteboards and moving all the furniture and using their own devices.

These rooms were designed for group study, and yet some people believe they are the space best suited to make private calls or work on silent work. No! These rooms are made of glass! With the direct purpose of enabling library employees to see what is going on in there!

There are spaces suited for silent/quiet work, and the group study spaces are not one of them. So, as occurred last week, sometimes we have a studious middle-aged person who takes umbrage with the teens having an idle chat (plus or minus music or laughter) and the volume thereof.

I try to tell people early and often that the rooms are not soundproof, and that anything they are saying can and will be overheard by their neighbors. My rule of thumb is that if I can hear you clearly all the way from my desk, you are surely irritating the shit out of your neighbors. Then, I shush you! Under that threshold, as long as there is a harmonious agreement (aka no one complains and I do not observe library violations taking place), it is a community space and the community may use it to their needs.

And that brings me to the markers. I cringe a little when I see kids aimlessly doodling on the whiteboards, in a fashion some might deem “wasting” the markers. When I find myself stressing over the marker ink and costs, I remind myself of my prior statement: within reason/barring violations of policy, the community may use it to their needs. And, in many cases, they leave art behind. Many do this intentionally, but it could also be pure laziness and avoiding erasing their nonsense.

You decide!

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So-and-so was here? Dickish, but a call to be seen

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Adorbs

And then my personal favorite, a stream-of-consciousness commentary/word poem:

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Could not love this more.

I think there is something precious about these glimpses into (what were likely) teen artists’ heads. At the very least, they leave a little personality behind on what would be sterile white surfaces. They claim “I was here!” and “I think I like doodling” and “we are ridiculous together” and sometimes even “we were productive today” (but those look a lot like notes/maths sooo I don’t take photos of them-boring!).

I love when there are good doodles left behind. I love the creativity, and the freedom of expression. I love that the kiddos feel at home enough to leave their arts on the walls. I love that they are goofy and themselves. Teens are not great at everything, but they are admirable in their them-ness. A better way to say it might just be authenticity.

Not that I did such a great job at being a teen, but when the conversation turns to “would you go back to do high school over again?” I say yes every time. Not only because I would do it with so much more confidence, but I genuinely loved high school. (All school up to grad, actually 🙂 I had the immense gift of a tribe of weirdos who, when we were together, we were total smart idiots, confident and off the wall. All of us had issues (mine being desperation at even the slightest of glances from a member of the opposite sex) but together, we were unstoppable.

And so, it still being January, I’m adding to my goals for this year. I want to be a little more like (the best parts of) me as a high schooler, with the benefit of both wisdom and legal age to purchase alcohol… Being goofy and myself, creative and at home in my surroundings. Learning all the time. Loudly in love with my friends. Friendos, let us gather and have bonkers conversations and general merriment! Duolingo is in progress, there is a nebulous plan for learning to make jewelry, and I might even purchase some film here someday soon (and a new gym membership…one that I’ll actually GO to!).

The dream is that I’ll be so immersed in creative pursuits that anxiety won’t even take root. And of course, I’ll hold myself accountable here, making the private more or less public!

anxiety, be a better human, books, career, community, depression, joy, let it go, reading, writing

How Time Works

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As the clock struck midnight on January 1st, I sat, like many others, watching the ball drop. As the cameras panned the crowd at Times Square, an announcer held a microphone in front of a group of young women who exclaimed it was “SO CRAZY!” how it was a new decade. I laughed with someone I don’t know well but respect, as he said “it’s not crazy! It’s how time works!” My thoughts exactly. Literal! Practical!

Though it’s easy to critique merrymakers in varying states of intoxication, and though in general I am an advocate of remarking on wonder whenever it strikes, time really does work minute by minute and hour by hour.

Anxiety would have me fast forward through future days/hours/minutes until I know all the answers and the ways everything plays out. Depression and obsessive thinking would trap me in the past days/hours/minutes and replaying all of the cringeworthy mistakes and missteps I made, all the people who I lost. And it’s easy to look at a month, a year, a decade, in those terms.

Ten years ago, I was reeling from the most traumatic and destructive event of my life. I was paralyzed by fear, doubt, isolation and loss. I could not let go of the plan I had made and outwardly insisted I was fine, marching forward into the worst year of my life up to that point.

It is my hope that over the last ten years (especially the past one), I have learned to let go of the controlled plan and to deal with reality before I move forward. To stop forcing it. It is my goal to take each day as it comes and do my best with it, which is to say mindfully advance through, while prioritizing my needs as well as the people I care about. It is also my hope that when (not if!) I fail to do that, as I feel about this holiday season, I won’t punish myself with a constant stream of internal criticism but instead show some compassion.

And some of the minutes/days, compassion is out of my reach. I get trapped in my habits. And those are the days when I need to surround myself with the amazing humans in my orbit. New Year’s Eve was one of those days: I needed a shock out of my head. And I got it, in the form of social connection and warmth. (Note: NYE was not exclusive in this–I needed and got social connection and warmth over the holidays as well, from my amazing long-distance friends too.)

A lovely co-guest at my amazing friends’ dinner party brought a jar of questions for us all to answer, ranging from light and conversational to reflective and emotional. We were talking about the tribulations and triumphs of the year, the people we are grateful for and the lessons we’ve learned. And, like any good event, we quoted Titanic (to making it count!) It was a great end to the year, and it did feel crazy that I was into this sentimental, sort of mushy activity. It felt crazy and wondrous what a difference this decade has made.

And speaking of counting, 2019 was the first year of the decade that I didn’t meet or exceed my reading goal. I couldn’t be prouder of this shortcoming, because it means I was doing other things! Some fruitless, some counterproductive, but overall I was trying to take in a variety of media, and to output/create to counterbalance what I took in. There are many ways I can do more, or better, or more compassionately, but at the close of one HARD year and the start of another, I am okay with how I’ve done. A far cry from being in love with my life and free from fear or regret, but at least on that side of center.

Last week at the library, an older gentleman approached me and asked if we had a certain title. I helped him, and he challenged me to guess how old he was. He was excited and proud to show me his drivers license, stating his birth year of 1926, making him 93 years old (2 years older than my grandpa would be if he were alive). I was shocked, considering how mobile and lucid he was, and he wanted to share his ‘secret:’ he swims and rows 3 times per week, and has for years. That, and he dyes his hair 🙂 He seemed, overall, to be in love with his life.

This year, I’m going to take a page from him. I’m going to capitalize on any youth or strength I feel and celebrate the (sometimes painfully few) ways my body serves me. I’m going to be open and friendly with people I know and people I don’t (within boundaries). I plan to take pages from my friends and family, by creating (artfully or not) and putting people and pets first; from my colleagues by thinking before speaking and taking pride in my work.

This decade, I’m reclaiming my time. I’m getting my shit together, and keeping it that way. I’m falling in love, with my life if not more. And as long as I can, I’ll be working on being mindful and making this happen every minute and every day, because that’s how time works.

be a better human, books, community, empathy, kindness, librarians, strangers

Hate That Guy

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Recently, my heart was warmed to be together, in person!, with two friends from high school that I’d lost touch with (plus my BFF). Our four-person group text has been going for about a year, and this re-connection-even by text-has been a source of support and grounding for all of us through what has been a particularly rocky and challenging year. It has helped me particularly to see what amazing, strong, quirky women my childhood friends have become because this reminds me that I have the same strong/quirky woman foundation as they do. Our school taught us to be independent and ourselves, and these women tug me back to these roots. My roots.

The texting was cathartic, it was rejuvenating, it was entertaining, and it was a reminder that none of us have to go through anything alone. To coordinate to be in the same room at the same time, much less for an entire weekend, was stellar. If adulthood is 98% scheduling, we were (at least for one weekend) kickass adults.

We laughed, we cried, we reminisced… about the various poor choices we made, our favorite teachers (hi Jeanne and Tim and David and Psi!) and about our yearbook. I think it should be nationally recognized when high school yearbook staffs are willing to be together in person as adults, because that process could have torn anyone apart. Our three personalities (all stubborn, one more creative and one more dictatorial) clashed like crazy. Senior year was rough, as we struggled to learn the design program, generate a vision and see it through to production, all while managing not to kill each other. It was tense, and I apologized to my co-editors this reunion weekend for being a know-it-all yearbook tyrant.

We made several mistakes with our yearbook (all very obvious in print) that I regret deeply. This document we created is not perfect. One of the biggest blemishes I did NOT cause, however, was a senior page that took a loooot of creative license. No one else remembered or found this page offensive, but I announced “UGH I hate her for ruining our yearbook.”

My friend, not a saint but not NOT a saint, looked at me with such confused sadness, and it shriveled me and my childish tendency to react with anger and judgment. Of course I don’t hate her for any reason, much less a page of a book from 13 years ago.

This tendency shows up though! The one DJ on my favorite radio station (hate her), when people bypass traffic and merge at the front of the line (HATE THEM), There are plenty of individual customers who come into the library who cause the collective boiling of staff blood. Whether this is because they make inappropriate comments, corner us and keep us pinned down with their seemingly endless questions that we answer over and over and over again as we try to exit, or let their five-year-old run unattended through the library or plopped down in front of a computer for hours on end…. but that is just one person.

In addition to the above highly irritating behaviors with every member of the staff, one particular evening, this one particular man tried to guess my religion (continually naming varying sects of Christianity) despite my (I thought) clear nonverbal communication to discontinue doing so. I believe people should not ask this of strangers, nor should they guess. It is, to my common sense, rude and invasive.

This man cornered my coworker last week and she literally disappeared for 40 minutes. I could not believe the audacity of this dude, and when she came back, I let her know.

I hate that guy! (I continued, near-ranting, for an uncomfortable amount of time.)

She interrupted at times to say “well, I think he actually needed the help today” and when I finally paused for breath, she told me that one of his sons had just died, at age 27, from an infection that started from a broken arm.

Fuck.

I almost cried: of sadness for him, of disappointment in myself. It was almost comical, how riled up I got on this, of all days to get riled up about the guy.

My coworkers did not appear to think I was a horrible person (though I had my doubts). The book I am reading (and have been since April, slowly digesting its wonder) gave me exactly what I needed. The first page I opened to talked about how bodhisattvas are said to be enlightened because they are fully compassionate, and that rather than berating ourselves, we ought to channel the negativity. I thought “May all circumstances serve to awaken compassion” summed it up nicely.

READ THIS BOOK, DAMN IT. (Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha) by Tara Brach.

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Soooooo moral of the story is to “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Obvious enough, but habit makes it SO hard to implement. Change requires examining habits with a microscope, at the time they occur, and pausing enough to make a conscious choice rather than falling for the default setting.

My default is to say I HATE THAT GUY/GIRL, so that’s what I am working on, because hating isn’t a good feel. One place I might start is by using mindfulness/boundaries: if I mindfully observe that someone is making me feel uncomfortable with invasive personal questions, I need to verbalize some variation of the words “your question is personal, and I will not answer it.” At work, maybe even followed with “is there something library-related I can help you with?” And in general, checking myself before I wreck myself.

anxiety, career, community, coworkers, information, joy, reading, strangers

Balance.. and working

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Not surprisingly, this is not the first time I’m writing about balance. People with anxiety know that balance is essential to avoid spinning out into spirals. I knew August would be tough, work-wise, because I accepted a lot of extra night/weekend shifts at the library. I just counted, and I worked 39 shifts over the course of the month (aka going from full-time job to part-time job multiple times, plus the beloved weekend shifts). Sometimes when I’m in self-pitying moods, I think I work a second job because I like to whine and tell everyone how hard I work. I have to remind myself that in reality, I love both my jobs, and up until recently I haven’t really had that much other stuff going on that I would rather be doing.

I know I did it to myself. I overcommitted, thinking it would balance itself out with the fact that I didn’t really work at the library in June. And now that August is over, maybe balance is achieved! The extra income is nice, and for every customer who makes my skin crawl, there is an equal if not greater than pleasant customer who knows my name or otherwise warms my heart.

And so without further ado, picture the following scenarios (presented in a glorified list). One bad for one good.. or maybe the scales tip slightly toward the pleasant.

Bad: when on the third day of working 5-9 after working 8:30-4:30, a guy who feels he is your friend (he is not) lets his young child continue on his way out (to dick around and be generally unsupervised) in order to tell you a longwinded tale of who from church asked him to look up the lyrics and sheet music (you don’t care), after you have already spent at least 15 minutes of your life helping him find this sheet music and him asking if he can just take a photo of it and print it and you say no, that is a copyright violation so he needs to buy it and he asks you to buy it and he can pay you and you say no while silently begging him to walk away and instead, like you hoped he wouldn’t but knew he would, he tells you what religion he is and asks you about yours. You wonder why people still think this is appropriate to ask someone who is on the clock at their job. Thankfully, he only guesses, and does not do so correctly, and then he leaves.

Good: when a high schooler who you knew as an awkward seventh grader walks towards you at the desk and greets you by name even though you haven’t worked at his school for two years, and generally teens don’t A) remember you or B) approach you even if they do. You talk to him about his favorite teachers from the last year and you think about the difference between a seventh grader and a tenth grader and how crazy that that difference happens in just over two years.

Bad: when people uncomfortable with technology call in to ask how to use the technology, and get confused and angry at you when you tell them the proper buttons to press, and they have to hang up to perform the action because they are trying to do it on their phone. You wonder why these people don’t come into the library to ask when you know they are otherwise capable of leaving their homes.

Good: when you help the upbeat youngish dad who works at the wine store use Adobe Acrobat (the fancy kind) to edit his visa application to visit China, and he is so effusively appreciative the day of, plus when you are working next, he returns and tells you he had his in-person interview at the consulate and everything is IN and approved and thanks you again, and smiles even bigger whenever he sees you in the wine store or he is in the library, like you are acquaintance-friends (you are!).

Bad: when customers overhear, misunderstand, and jump into your conversations with other customers, resulting in lengthy, factually inaccurate conversations you attempt to thwart but continue nevertheless about parking validation, or how to download ebooks, or any number of topics that you know you and your colleagues will have to set right, one person at a time.

Good: speaking of setting things right, you get the opportunity to give that woman the correct information about smartphone-less Uber, despite your still wondering why she thinks it will be different than a traditional taxi service, but you also give her some resources for concierge services that may help her get errands done.

Good: when an email in the general staff account is from an airline representative who found a library book in the customer lounge and they want to know how to get in touch with the customer to mail it back (bless their heart). Then, a week later, your boss emails you that there is a piece of mail for you and you are baffled until you go in and open it and see that the airline representative has mailed the book to you, and then you go show everyone working the book and use it as evidence that not all people suck and your coworkers view it the same way.

Bad: the sad feeling you get when you are near the smelly people or the people whose brains limit what they can do in the world, people who you help apply for a job on Indeed.com and you have to direct them exactly where to click, and then again to instruct them to click.

Mediocre: you walk back to the desk after walking around at close to find a note that reads “You’re Doing Great!” and you, knowing how few people are in the building at that time of Friday night, wonder whether a coworker or the teen boy you startled by opening the bathroom door just as he was exiting to announce that the library is closing or the guy you just helped with uploading his resume into Indeed left it. You identify that several of these options are more harmless than others. But like, you bring it home because it kind of makes you feel nice, when you think about how this person could have said this to your face but instead chose to write it on a slip of paper.

Great: when a woman comes in and asks you to find a “camp” she and her sister attended in the 1950s when she was 5 and her sister was 8 and after speaking with her a little while, you learn that this took place when their mother had TB, and while she recovered, her young children listened to stories and ran around and made fond memories of their time at camp, and then you find a New York Times article from 1955 (because bless the NYT and their archives) that identifies exactly what this place from 60 years ago that this woman never asked her mother about as an adult and now doesn’t have the option. You discuss that neither of you would ever have known that such a place was called a “preventorium” and you marvel about language and how even medical, scientific vocabularies change so much, much less how these topics are handled and treated. And you print out the article for her, because this is just really fucking cool, and she is from out of town so you never see her again but she asks your name, introduces herself, and tells you she really appreciates it.

So, yes, morale can be low at times, but you decide that there is a kind of expertise in shaking off the weird interactions and starting over with the next person. And there is a special kind of bond when someone really needs something and you’re the one to provide it. And at the very least, there is something extremely human in how people navigate the weird space that is a library, which is to say: community.

books, career, community, coworkers, let it go, librarians

Let It Burn

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On the second-most-scenic drive home, there is an empty plot of land where a house burned down. I had my eye on this house for a long while, since I used to live just down the road from it. I had my eye on it because A) it was closer to the road than the other houses, and because it was falling apart, and because it gave me the itch: the feeling I get when I look at a mess that I want to organize–target, acquired. Get rid! This eyesore has got to go! Raze it and start over!

Because it was so on display, I clocked and  every imperfection of the house, from the boarded and broken windows to the caving-in roof, to the decomposing porch. Yes, I wondered why/when its owners had abandoned it, but more than anything I could see it wasn’t helpful.

Whenever long-dormant buildings like this burn down, I assume someone set it on fire. And I certainly don’t blame them. The only thing stopping me from doing so with every dilapidated building I see is the threat of arson charges. There is something cleansing in the removal from the landscape a house that no longer houses. Rather than gradually eroding one board at a time, an event happens to reset. To clear, remove that which is no longer serving its purpose.

—-

My attitude at work, if not my attitude in general, has started to smoke. Historically, I was the student/professional to volunteer for extra responsibilities, to speak up and often and generally help out. At some point during or after grad school, I became jaded and resentful. I would still offer to cover shifts for my coworkers, but I did not put in more work than was strictly necessary.

In preparation for the anniversary of the moon landing, a coworker had created a book list of related topics (space travel, biographies of astronauts, etc.) and as she hustled around talking about her to-do list with the last 30 minutes we were open, I volunteered to help put up her display. Also historically, I love creating book displays, but when I told her this and she told me I could make one literally whenever I felt like it by signing up to do so, I recoiled. Me!?! No. I do not extra-librarian. Not anymore.

This reaction was bratty and entirely based in habit. I paused, I examined my reaction, and determined that I had strayed too far from who I am. I am a person who volunteers. I am a joiner, and a doer of the things. Even if the things are extra-librarian-y. Just because I don’t have the job title doesn’t mean I should reject it.

So I set that attitude up in flames, and don’t you know it, there was an opening to make a book list & display almost immediately. And a new project committee to join (and yes, I took my lunch break from my main job to attend meetings for it). Maybe a lot of work, but worth the reinvestment into my department and my librarian-ity, and the idea that I can be happy and contribute at work.

—-

I remember the day that abandoned house burned down; I couldn’t believe that I happened to take that route that day. Often, I avoid it in the name of expediency; the flat, strip-mall-infested route seems more direct, and in exchange for the red lights and concrete, doesn’t take me past my old apartment with its history. Driving through the faint smoke cloud, I reasoned it had to have burned within the past day. Yellow caution tape surrounded the property. The chimney, brick as it was, was the only recognizable piece still standing. I was overjoyed that it had come down, and curious/excited about the possibility for the site’s future occupants.

With this unwanted, not cared for, not useful structure gone, there is so much space for new creation. It is my hope that as my career smoke clears, I’ll use what serves me to rebuild too.