Skip to main content

Job Searching and Wonting

Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day!  My outlook sharply contrasts with the dreary, cloudy day, because I have hope.  After 9 months of unfruitful job searching, I have finally been granted an interview.  Even though this is only a first interview via Skype, it represents much more than that; it represents hope of a promise of personal fulfillment.  It means I am not wasting my time.  It means my MLIS degree was not a waste, but a fruit from a tree which has been tended.  Well, sort of...

I waver between chomping at the bit to get back to work, and putting more efforts into my bakery endeavors.  Coupled with my other responsibilities, these two dreams cannot exist simultaneously.  I feel like I'm an undergraduate again, torn between academia and my art studios.  So many general education classes are required, but a focus is also necessary.  Each discipline demands your full attention and devotion, yet leaves you sort of empty, not really fitting in anywhere, even though everybody else thinks you do.  The history teachers recruit you to be a historian, the oil painters want you learning about your predecessors while you crank out paintings.  You really like them all...

Some weeks I spend my free minutes scouring the web for job postings and submitting applications.  Other weeks, I scour cookbooks and the web for recipes, then get in the kitchen and test, test, test.  All the while, I feel like crap because I'm not able to channel my creative and intellectual energies very far, and because I'm tired as a mom of a young tot.  I even wrote a conference paper, got it accepted, only to realize I can't afford to make the trip because I'M STILL UNEMPLOYED.

Even though there are glimpses of light at the end of the tunnel, it's still a Catch-22- gotta have money to make money.  That dividing line between the haves and the have nots is wide, yes, even in the first world. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

myspace versus facebook

When will the madness end? Now the myspace buzz is out, facebook is in. I even saw a mashup [can't find it again!] that proclaimed facebook the genius brainchild of social networking systems, and myspace the red-headed step-child who scrubs the floors. Okay, maybe it wasn't really that bad, but it was pretty brutal. And I'm supposed to give a conference presentation about how helpful myspace can be for libraries? I'm going to have to dig pretty hard for that one. Yikes!

MySpace goes org

I created a generic myspace page for a public library as my final project in Doc Martens' LIS web class in Fall 2006. I also work as a reference librarian at a public library. My fellow librarian and comrade liked it, and thought he would show it to our library director, who also liked it, and asked me to tailor it to our library, Stillwater Public. I no longer have the beta-version available, but here is what the "finished" product looks like. Luckily for our library, we do not receive e-rate funding, so we do not have to block social networking and blogging websites, like other schools and libraries do. Patrons come to our library to access the internet and www.myspace.com, more specifically, because it's banned in so many places. I put up signs last week advertising that our library is now on myspace, and got a few extra friends requests. Hopefully, as word spreads, more people will be interested in joining our friends' list and getting all sorts of up ...

race relations in the South with Harper Lee

I didn't hear very many positive things about Harper Lee's newly released novel, Go Set a Watchman  when my turn for our library's copy came around last week:  "It was supposed to be a rough draft."  "Nothing can compare to To Kill a Mockingbird." " Not everybody can enjoy this book." But still, I resolved to give it a fair chance and promptly checked it out. I have enjoyed reading other books by young Southern ladies, such as Carson McCullers.  The Heart is a Lonely Hunter  captivated my attention as a young-20-something.  I was moved by the author's sensitivity, the sense of loneliness and humanity, and the vivid description of empoverished life in the South, being a new transplant myself (I moved to North Carolina by way of South Africa then before that, Oklahoma, which is sometimes considered but definitely not, Southern). And of course, I read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird in high school English class.  We subsequently revi...