This post has been a long time coming, but I kept putting it off because I didn't know how to write it and I also kept thinking a little bit of balance and routine were just around the corner.
I no longer work at the library. I am proud to say that the library job I had for the last fourteen years was everything to me, and it no longer shames me to tell you that when I realized I could no longer keep it, it completely consumed and devastated me. For a while, I struggled with both the loss of this job and feelings of shame for it being such a huge life crisis. I spent a lot of time working through that, and I'm ok with how much the loss affected me. I loved my job, patrons, and coworkers and thought I would retire there. I wanted to work in a public library since the summer before sixth grade, and I carried that dream for a long time before it became true. It was a dream I fought hard for, and the job was even better than the one I dreamed of having for so long.
I am finally at a place where I can say I am so stinking grateful I had the incredible opportunity to work at a library and live the dream.
I am still getting my Master of Library Science degree. I was extremely fortunate to enjoy both my summer and fall classes after a tough spring class, and I am taking two classes this semester. I'm hoping to finish by the end of this year. Though I do not have plans of returning to libraries any time soon, I still want to finish this degree.
This month Robert and I bought a business together, an awards/promotions/custom gifts shop that has been around for over 40 years. Last summer the owner, a longtime customer and friend of Robert's, mentioned she was thinking about retiring and selling the shop. After many discussions, Robert and I decided to take the plunge. We all agreed to finalize the purchase on the first of January. While we waited for that to happen I did a lot of shadowing, learning the business, diving into accounting, and also much reorganizing and cleaning. There are so many things you can customize, vendors to buy things from, there's outsourcing of some products and making others in house, and machinery/processes/products to learn. It's been overwhelming but also fun. At the library I was fortunate to hear so many patron stories and be a part of some of those stories in a small way. In this new business I get to do the same. Just a couple days ago, a librarian came into the shop with a fantasy baseball trophy, and when I asked what his league's name was, he said it was Moose something or another. But the figurine was an owl! So yes, there was a reason the trophy no longer had a moose. For me, the stories and connections with others are a big part of my happiness.
In September there was still so much uncertainty about my future job path. In October and November I was shadowing and getting to know who I was going to be working with. I work mostly with one other person, a very patient, capable graphic designer who is about my age. In December all the transitions were happening and there was a lot of reorganization and cleaning going on. And now I am officially there, still learning but getting a little more comfortable each day. Right now the focus is learning Quickbooks. We chose not to transfer all the product and customer information from desktop QB to QBO, so each customer and item is being added as we go. Every invoice is a fifteen minute discussion. Do we want our perpetual plate metal to be a different item from our sheets of metal? Do we engrave enough business card holders and desk wedges to create a "Desk" category? If we have multiple contacts from a local business/university/high school, how do we want to create subgroups? What if we have two contacts from one school of pharmacy and they each have their own orders? It's the kind of brain work I enjoy, but wooeeee there's a lot of it.
Right now we are getting a lot of fantasy football trophies brought in for updates. These trophies are usually brought in each year by different people. So we created a way to group each fantasy football league but keep their members as individuals.
It's not just Quickbooks and bookkeeping though. There's so much variety to the work and there is even a little bit of repetition and detail work I enjoy. After the graphic designer puts together the designs, the afternoons are usually all about printing, cutting, and assembly of various plaques, medals, trophies etc.
With the new accounting software, some reorganization projects that have things helter skelter right now, clusters of fantasy football trophies everywhere (the collective noun we've chosen is a "stadium"), and a snow storm that briefly upended us, we have not found our groove yet. But we are getting there.
There are a few bonuses. I do not have to ask permission to go to doctor appointments. I can work longer if I need to or scoot hours around. The shop is less than ten minutes from my home and even closer to Robert's office. Josie goes to work with Robert, and Margo goes to work with me. And probably the thing I'm most grateful for is that the other person I work with all the time has lots of patience and humor. She is also passionate about the job, asks the questions I don't always think of, and isn't afraid of spiders, which we have been evicting from the premises thanks to our big cleaning sweep. I am still working on my big feelings about spiders, but I feel like I'm having a lot of moments of personal growth, so it's ok I'm still flunking in one area. I started to add the cleaning of different areas in the building to my calendar but realized (with some embarrassment) that once I make my way through all the areas, I need to start over again. I can hear the spiders laughing at me about this. And really, they're laughing every time they hear one of these conversations:
Who needs a vintage desk plate thingy from the nineties?
Oh, every year or so someone will ask.
Ok, we'll hang onto it.
How am I going to remember to clean out those boxes with the vintage doodads though?
Cue the spider laughter.
My health struggles are still a mystery, but there is a procedure I'm doing beginning in March that sounds promising. I had hoped the issues were exacerbated by the extraordinary stress I was under while working at the library the past year, but I haven't had much relief. I was able to get a second opinion, and at the very first appointment the doctor was both exceptionally understanding and also told us what he thought the issues were. That's the good news. The bad news is that they're so booked up I have to wait until March. Thankfully, I have the most understanding and supportive husband and also a job where I can have some flexibility about doctor appointments and restroom breaks.
I will likely be a little flighty about posting in the next month or so while we work toward our new normal. Thanks to those who have reached out. It means so much to me.
