At Least I Had Clothes On

My work sent around one of those helpful "check on your withholding status because the end of the year is coming and we're going to be preparing your W2" notes recently.

I can only assume that it was this which prompted my brain to deliver me a dream in which it was April 15th and I had completely forgotten about taxes.

I was frantically explaining to someone that it was all because of the baby having distracted me (a pretty good excuse) and trying to gather my paperwork, convinced that I could still get it done in time.

With online filing, this is probably true, although not recommended, so I was right not to be totally panicking in the dream.

"Having a baby should just automatically get you an extension!" I said.

So thanks, I guess, work. That was entertaining.

Keeping Busy

This week in work, I'm occupied with urgently locating and marking for discard a number of volumes of print journals in advance of a whole-floor renovation that was initially anticipated to be half the floor; working on a fascinating problem of location codes in catalog records in advance of the implementation of an entirely new catalog system; and determining how we 're going to process anatomical models for circulation in advance of people being able to check them out.

I also had a researcher come in to look at some material from the archive, and of course there are reference shifts to cover.

These are exciting times, and don't let anyone tell you different.

I Was Working! I Was Working!

I was thinking how whenever anyone startles me at work, even if it was because I was concentrating on some work I was doing (and possibly listening to music at the same time), I always secretly wonder if it makes me look 'guilty.'

I think "does she think I was buying socks on eBay right then instead of working?"

And the weird thing is, this means that I must assume no one could ever think I was deeply engrossed in actual work, right?

Because work is so boring, it's not like I would be concentrating on it! Clearly if I was wrapped up in something to the point that I didn't hear someone come to my office, I must be doing something else!

Apparently I have a low opinion of other peoples' opinion of my job.

I mean, I don't have a low opinion of my job. I like my job. Sometimes I get caught up in working on something and I get startled when someone shows up at the door. It happens.

But I seem to think no one else would believe that I could get caught up in my job, and that they must all be assuming I'm slacking off instead, if I'm paying that much attention to something.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this thought.

Something about how it's not cool to think your job is interesting enough to get engrossed in? Something about how I assume everyone else thinks my job isn't interesting enough to get engrossed in? Something about how I'm defensive about my job and feel like everyone's always picking on me because my job isn't cool? Something about how I'm always feeling left out of all the cool parties?

Naw, it's gone. Anyway, look, sometimes I just get really focused, and then you might startle me if you come in suddenly.

It doesn't mean I was reading novels on the computer on company time!

I only read short stories on company time.

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Trudging For Better Health

Since I was fretting about my commute killing me the other day, I thought I would note, on the pro-commute side, that I just picked up a nifty STAT!Ref branded pedometer recently (no, it's not a robot in socks, but it's pretty cool), and it indicates that I'm getting just about the recommended 10,000 steps in a workday.

I have to say that this is pretty much entirely because I walk a mile and half on the way to work. I would not be taking that many steps while at work. Mostly at work I sit at one desk or another.

And I would not be taking that many steps at home. Mostly at home I sit in this chair and look at my computer, or sit on the floor and look at the TV screen. I like to imagine that ducking involuntarily when something in my video game attacks me is exercise, but we all know this is unlikely to be true.

Really the thing is, 10,000 is kind of a big number.

So basically I lead a highly sedentary lifestyle other than the regular brisk activity that is forced upon me by my commute. I'm still not totally in love with the commute, mind you, because I'm still a little horrified by the vast amounts of time it consumes, but I reckon it's not all bad.

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Reflections on Commuting

I had to notice this Slate piece called, bluntly, Your Commute Is Killing You.

I had to notice, because it happens that I have a reasonably lengthy commute myself, and have sometimes wondered about how awesome that really is. Not very, I have sometimes suspected.

I live about 10 miles from where I work, but it takes me on average an hour and 10 or an hour and 15 minutes to get there, through a combination of walking and taking the train.

In case you wondered, it would certainly take nearly that long to drive, too, plus the additional joys of parking fees and sitting in traffic seething about the precious gasoline that's being quietly burned up to move a couple of feet in a minute. I drove to work for a while years ago and it was maddening. Never again!

I'm not worried about the fact that I take the train. I love the train. At least I can read and not think about traffic. Public transportation! Yay! Woooo! Etc.

Seriously. Public transportation is key. Please use my tax dollars to fund it. Thank you.

Nevertheless, even loving the train, the sheer amount of time I spend getting to and from work is kind of daunting to think about. I mean, that's close to 12 hours a week in travel time. Well over an entire workday. Spent not working, but not not-working. Just getting from place to place.

I'm on salary, but I worked out the hourly rate once, based on my official 8:30-5:00 workday, and it's OK. And then I factored in 2 to 2 1/2 hours per day of commute--which is time that essentially does belong to work, even though I'm not actually accomplishing anything work-related, since I'm also not using it for anything productive in a non-work sense--and that was kind of depressing.

So depressing, in fact, that I immediately forgot it, and am afraid to figure it out again lest I be plunged into despair. All I remember is that apparently it takes better than a librarian's salary to make a 11-hour workday look like a really good deal on an hourly basis.

Especially because I just read this story in the free daily paper--which I now realize is all I can afford on a librarian's salary--saying that the average starting salary for a new college graduate is $50,462 (the figure is in the sidebar). Now I'm going to confess a perhaps shameful secret, given that it's just not nice to talk about money, and divulge that this is only about $1,000 less than I'm making right now, and I've been out of college for 12 years.

So if you want, you can work out my hourly wage yourself, but don't tell me, because I probably don't want to hear about it.

What are new college graduates doing? I don't know. Not studying to become librarians, if they know what's good for them.

Anyway, whatever, I'm not worried about that either. I'll make the big bucks some other way, perhaps with my brilliant novels or my truly excellent cocaine. Or, more to the point, I make big enough bucks to afford housing, food and video games, so I'm good. It's not about the money. And that money is plenty good compared to what plenty of people live on.

But the time, you know. All that time, hundreds of hours a year spent just going from home to work and back. I don't know if I actually even recommend you read that article, because it may just depress you.

Some notes from the piece:

Couples in which one partner commutes for longer than 45 minutes are 40 percent likelier to divorce. 

...every 10 minutes spent commuting results in 10 percent fewer "social connections." 

...one in three workers with a 90-minute daily commute has recurrent neck or back problems.

When we spend more time commuting, we spend less time exercising and fixing ourselves meals at home.

Fun, right?

Now I like to put a positive spin on my commute, because I like to not be overwhelmed with the desire to curl up and weep for days, so I think happy thoughts.

For example, my commute involves walking about 15 minutes to the train station, riding the train for about half an hour, and walking for about 15 minutes to work. (The additional 5 to 10 minutes usually come from waiting for or on the train.) That means I'm out and walking for about an hour a day, in 15-minute chunks, and that's good for accumulating some exercise, which all the health-interested people say you should do.

I like getting out and walking, and it's way too easy not to leave the house at all on weekends, what with the video games, or to leave only to get in the car and drive to visit someone (because none of our friends live within walking distance), so it's kind of a good thing I have a commute to get me out and moving around on a regular basis.

Plus, that half an hour each way on the train is nice quiet time to sit (or stand) and read a book. I don't have as much time to read books as I used to, what with the video games and the internet, so it's nice to have some time where there's really nothing else going on and I can delve into that novel I borrowed from the public library. (Public libraries are key. Please use my tax dollars to fund them. Thank you.)

So my commute is not all bad. Not as bad as if I were just getting in the car and driving/sitting in traffic for an hour and 10 minutes. If that's what you're doing, I'm sorry. I guess you can still listen to music or audiobooks, though?

The article talks about how a lot of people make the trade between a larger house and one closer to work, so you basically pay with time for a bigger house farther away from work, but that's not necessarily what's going on for me. Sadly, my gracious spouse and I currently live about midway between our two workplaces, so moving closer for one of us would just make things worse for the other.

We did not play that right, it turns out.

Still, I can think positively that my personal commute is not actively killing me. It gives me exercise and reading time! It's totally awesome!

Around 24 full days a year of awesome.

My best commute ever was the summer in college that I stayed and worked on campus. I stayed in on-campus housing and was about a block from work. It will probably never get better than that.

I've decided you just have to think of the commute time as accomplishing something in addition to travel. Otherwise, you might as well curl up and weep for days.

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Planning the Day

I used to use a wall calendar a lot. I kept track of travel days and such on it. It worked fine when my schedule was pretty much the same every day.

The past few years, I've taken to a daybook. Too many meetings. Reference desk shifts. Classes. Etc.

I still have a wall calendar in my office, mostly for decorative purposes since I only today got around to changing it to April.

I suppose the logical next step is keeping my calendar on some high tech gizmo like a real up to date person, but I haven't managed to own anything with a planning function I like and that I'm not afraid of dropping. Paper is still cheaper.

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Fail Away, Everyone

I like this post from Isis the Scientist, stating that she believes 'impostor syndrome' is a scam.

Not because people don't sometimes feel unqualified for something, but because, as she says,

Here's the problem with Imposter Syndrome. Having Imposter Syndrome means that others believe that you are super great, but that you believe you are fooling everyone - that you will not be succesful. But, this implies that if you fail, then you truly are an imposter.

And the problem with that is, sometimes we fail! Not everything works.

Which doesn't mean we should instantly retreat into a pit of shame and never show ourselves in public again.

It means you try again, or try with a different computer, or try something else entirely.

This is a good reminder that failing sometimes is just something that happens, not a sign that you're an impostor and a complete waste of human potential.

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Entertaining Interludes

I forgot how much I kind of like working on web pages until I started a little project today.

It's nitpicky, eyeball-wearying work, so obviously just my style.

The fun part is how you can change things in the horrible-looking hidden side, on the server, and then go back and it will look all neat and cool on the actual web page!

My mind is blown.

It's like when I was two and realized that when you rub this colored wax on this paper--you get a mark! On the paper! (I don't actually remember having that realization, but I imagine it was pretty thrilling.)

More specifically, it's like the first time I realized you could change things in the horrible-looking hidden side, on the server, and then go back and have it look all neat and cool on the actual web page.

You'll probably be thinking "it must be nice to be so easily impressed, so you can experience that fantastic thrill twice," and you'll be right.

I have to say that the sense of awesome power is also a draw.

You have no idea what I could be doing to that website even now. I could put anything I wanted on there, and it would be official.

Until someone noticed and took it down and possibly fired me, depending on what it was. Probably just long poetic phrases about how cool I am and how much redheads rule.

I had that power at my last job, and I realize I may have missed it.

Of course I can put anything I want in the catalog, too, so that's taken the edge off for a while.

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Sigh...Vacation Over

Gotta go back to work tomorrow.

However much I like my job, it seems like I'm never completely ready for a vacation to be over.

I could use another day, at least! A few more precious hours to sleep in!

Alas, it is not to be. Tomorrow is Monday, and school is back in session. Something probably needs cataloging, and there's the reference desk to think of. There are colleagues to greet and discuss the holidays with. Some things to order, and to pick up for the archives.

Also I have a book in at the library branch near work, so I'll be able to look forward to picking that up. I need to be working on this year's 50 books read, after all.

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Email Failure

A couple of weeks ago I boldly waded in and dealt with my email inbox, by gum! I pruned that bristling thicket down to a manageable couple of screens worth. Just the things I still needed to pay attention to in some way, you know.

Now, a short time later, it's a bristling thicket again. I can't seem to master the fine art of immediately moving messages to folders, so I leave them in my inbox to remind me that I need to pay attention to them, and then sooner or later they're several screens back and I don't see them anymore to remember that I need to either do something about them, or, if the statute of limitations has expired, delete them or move them to a folder.

The weird thing is that I'm not incredibly bad at email correspondence. I generally do pay attention to the messages I need to pay attention to. I guess I just never get around to dealing with them afterwards.

Anyway, it's been a relatively minor but very persistent hinderance to my attainment of perfect workplace efficiency.

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Learning for Work

This is a really good question, on Reports from a Resident Alien:

Why is it that we are expected to learn some things on our own; but that we are not expected to ever learn other things without help--even when those things are of equal complexity?

She compares learning the tasks of a job in a lab, complex but also carefully explained and supervised, with learning how to take public transportation, which has its own complexities, but is rarely explained in much detail and certainly doesn't have an established training process.

I definitely remember the uneasy sense of uncertainty when I first started riding the subway (a confusion which is renewed every time I go to another city and use their public transportation, generally much the same, but always slightly different).

How, exactly, do you pay? How do you move--how do you hold yourself in the crowd? How do you signal you want to get off? It's not difficult, but it's not nothing. There's stuff you have to know, steps you have to take.

Why, indeed, do we get very careful instruction on some things, and limited instruction on others?

My theory: money.

People train you to do stuff that they need you to do for business, or that they assume you'll need to know to earn a living (if it's not actually training related to a specific job), while you're kind of on your own if it's just something you need to do for your own convenience.

Your convenience is on you.

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Another Day

Sometimes there are days where you're just not sure what you actually did. I mean, what was going on that took up all that time between when I showed up at work and when I left?

I put stickers on some volumes of journals to mark the ones we mean to discard...talked to a student about a thesis...talked to a colleague about terrifying examples of IP questions we could use in classes...wrote some emails...wrote a single print letter to an archives donor...had a couple of reference desk shifts...did a little online course on human subjects research...

I dunno. Time passed.

And now it's the weekend, and not a moment too soon. Tomorrow, we're planning to go to Shakespeare on the Common. It's going to rock.

'Cause that's Shakespeare for you.

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Hazards of the Job

I was thinking "why do I have this weird sore spot on my stomach? I haven't been doing any sit-ups or getting into any stomach-punching contests lately."

And then I realized that it was from hanging headfirst over the edge of a big recycling bin to grab a volume I had absent-mindedly discarded at the very bottom.

At least it was a clean, dry bin. The volume was recovered without incident.

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Another Lazy Day

Today's to-do:

• E-journals to add to website, then to OPAC
• Gifts to process (reminds me of other, long-neglected gifts to process)
• Purchasing decisions to make
• Dental thesis student to meet (reminds me of dental theses to catalog)
• Friday class to contemplate preparing for
• Assignments to grade
• Reference desk shift 
• Random weird catalog record error to fix

Since it's a nice day, after all that:

• Frozen yogurt to go get

And the feeling of accomplishment is astounding. I'm going to accomplish eating yogurt! Life is good.

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I Don't Think That's Me

effinglibrarian at LISNews has posted an amusing flowchart designed to let you know whether or not you should become a librarian.

Sadly, it appears I myself should not have chosen this line of work, since I have no cats.

Oh well, too late now.

Also, that bit about liking books interested me. I feel that as a librarian I actually almost don't like books, or at any rate don't value them simply for being books, the way I used to. Yeah, I guess it doesn't hurt to like books (though liking electronic books and journals--i.e., computer screens--is just as important where I work), but you also have to be a bit cavalier about them. I mean, we do have to weed.

We throw away books no one wants to read. (Yes, I feel a pang of regret. But I get over it.) A librarian's view of books is professional, not romantic or idealized.

I like them to the extent that I believe they may be of interest to the library's audience. Beyond that, I can't afford to care about them. There are too many, and we have too little space: just because something is a book, doesn't mean I want anything to do with it from a work standpoint.

Although I suppose it depends on how you define "book." Maybe we could agree that a librarian as a general rule probably likes "books" as a concept (the Works or Expressions in FRBR terms?), but that getting all excited about individual books (or Items?) will bring only heartache.

People will insist on checking books out, breaking their spines, spilling things on them, losing them, etc. You can be filled with rage and sorrow over such mistreatment ("aaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!"is the kind of thing you can say), but that's tiring. So after a while you get a little blasé about it.

Like books? Yes, I do, of course. Now get that out-of-date textbook off my shelves!

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Fuzzy Lines

I should really stop answering work emails from home. This should be my special relaxation with the blogs time!

Leave work at work, I always used to say.

But then I remembered that there was this email I never got around to answering before I left today that was just a tiny little question about whether we have a certain journal at the library, and before I know it I've looked and found that we do but not for the year the person needs, but hey, here are two other libraries nearby that do have that year, and also here's an interlibrary loan request form in case you can't get to either of them.

Then I logged out, because darn it, this has to stop somewhere!

Though I did have a phone message I never got around to answering...

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Spreading the Good Word

MLA Connections has a post about an event at the ALA meeting in Chicago to promote the Spectrum Scholarship Program.

The Spectrum Scholarship Program is ALA’s national diversity and recruitment effort designed to address the specific issue of under-representation of critically needed ethnic librarians within the profession.

MLA members were present specifically to encourage consideration of careers in medical libraries (I suppose that really goes without saying). In the interests of furthering this worthy goal, I will share my own latest story about how awesome it is to work in a medical library, specifically one associated with a medical school because that's the only one in which I've worked.

See, if you get your health care through the teaching hospital associated with the school, you can run into your doctor, who's a resident there, when she comes into the library to study for the board exams, and she can update you on your test results.

It's super convenient.


Unrelated update: OK, so how come I can no longer double space at the end of a post so it doesn't wind up squashed into the 'posted by'? Siiigh...back to putting a period there to make it stick, I guess.

At least I'm not alone. Sid Schwab at Cutting Through the Crap sometimes does this as well. Sometimes one wants a little space, you know?

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Websurf to Prosperity!

I saw this in a number of places, including the Boston Metro (local free paper), Stephen's Lighthouse, LISNews, and Wired. 

Because the news is that awesome. 

The linked pieces refer to a study from The University of Melbourne suggesting that moderate use of the internet for personal reasons during worktime is associated with increased productivity. Please note the responsible mention of the obvious qualification that this applies only to moderate internet use, so we can't use this as an excuse to read an online novel everyday or anything (drat!).

The theory is that taking occasional short breaks to browse the web allows people to then return to work tasks with refreshed concentration. Sounds good to me. It makes sense that taking a break and coming back to something after a few minutes would result in renewed energy for the task at hand.

Now you have to wonder if the same mental break benefits would apply for people in jobs where you can't simply move from one open browser window (with my Google docs spreadsheet) to another (with my Twitter feed) to take this break. The study is happy news for people working in offices with computers, but provides little comfort to those on assembly lines, I expect. 

Clearly, we must look into providing internet-capable cell phones to every worker as a way of boosting national productivity. 

Oh, come on, you can't say that's not the first thing you thought of too. 

It wasn't? Well, excuse me for being obsessed with internet on phones.