Category: Diary

The other night, I was having a conversation with an old friend who is in a less-than-healthy work environment. They were feeling stuck, running into roadblocks put up by colleagues who were not open to their growth or supportive of their success. That conversation left me full of gratitude for my own professional experiences.

All the way back to my undergraduate work-study jobs, I have been surrounded by people who have been cheering me on, rooting for me even when they didn’t have a stake in my success. As I’m contemplating another career shift, I am left reflecting on all the people who have mentored me and helped me grow.

I have had a few recent protracted periods of doing care work in relative isolation, though always with the support of my family, friends, and partner – caring for my dying mother and handling her affairs, raising an infant in a pandemic. Now I am focusing on finishing my degree and considering where I want to go from here, the most selfish – and empowering – professional decision I think I have ever made.

Right now, I am intentionally lingering in the uncertainty. It is incredibly uncomfortable to not have my next move planned out, and I am forcing myself to pause before reaching for the next project. But in sitting with my uncertainty, I also find myself sitting with my gratitude, reflecting on all the things I want to carry with me as I move forward. These I can write as a long list of imperatives:

Make space for the wholeness and messiness of people. Don’t run from conflict. Be gentle with others and yourself. Embody your values and authentic self, giving others room to do the same. Laugh. Seek to be unafraid of failure, and always pursue clear-eyed reflection. Be generous when you can. Respect your own and others’ boundaries and limits. Celebrate the unique talents, knowledge, and experience that everyone brings to the table. Hold space for difficult emotions. Find and share joy in your work and the work of others.

No workplace is perfect. I left many of my positions before I would have chosen to leave, and I know that can color the way I view the experiences I’ve had. But I am clear-eyed about these lessons, these aspirations. Moving through uncertainty, I am holding on tight to these as guiding stars. For all the people who helped me learn them, who gave them to me, thank you.

I’ve been realizing lately that I am not very cool. Or smart. Or funny. Or pretty. Or kind.

I used to think that I was really smart, because I read more than my classmates in high school and therefore my vocabulary was better. I never got good grades, but that was because grades weren’t really a measure of how smart you were. They were just a measure of how well you did the banal homework assigned to you out of a workbook. Or how well you copied off your smarter friends.

In college, I thought I was pretty cool. I wore weird clothes and listened to cool music. It’s hard to think you’re cool when you’re fat, which I have always been, but I thought being tall lent me a physicality that made me sort of butch-intimidating. I was also pretty queer, which maybe because I love queer people seems inherently cool. But as I got older, I started to realize that I didn’t really like “cool people.” They were kind of boring, and they worried more about being cool than being a good friend.

I try to be a good friend, but I wouldn’t describe myself as kind. I am overly blunt and often harsh. I care deeply about people and ideas, but I say things without thinking them through a lot. I am only occasionally articulate. I am not always good at taking care of my partner, and I worry I’ll be a horrible mother. I will nurture with fierceness, I’m sure.

So if I’m not any of these things, what’s my thing? It’s not my career, or my creativity, because I can’t seem to be bothered to express that and would just rather watch British Bake Off. What’s my thing that makes me not boring?

Perhaps I’ve come to a point in my life where I need to realize that being boring is not a sin.

Yesterday, I interviewed for my library dream job. It was a phone interview for a teen librarian position at this really amazing, super innovative library that just happens to be the closest library to our new house. Hello, universe, I see you! 

While traveling back to SF, I spent a whole bunch of hours prepping for a lot of questions that I didn’t get asked (sidenote: how cool is this Hiring Librarians’ Library Interview Question “Database”?). I did the interview an hour after our flight got in from San Jose, on about 4 hours of sleep and a butt load of adrenaline. Afterwards, I preceded to anxiously analyze each of my answers, agonizing over how I was a great fit values-wise, but less so experience-wise. I mean, I’ve never been in charge at a library, and my time in Silicon Valley kind of convinced me that “emerging tech” is just a fancy word for “fad”. I kept thinking to myself “why did my first interview with a library have to be for my dream job?” I mean, pressure much? 

The interview didn’t go poorly, but I still would not be surprised if I didn’t get a follow-up. I only have one semester of my MLIS under my belt, and it really is the first interview I’ve had since moving to Denver. I’m not saying I won’t be slightly heartbroken, but there is still a part of me that is encouraged that I even got the phone interview. Seriously, this is an amazing library. I’m a little thrilled.

There is a part of me that’s trying to talk myself into not being heartbroken. It’s been a rough year, and I can’t help feeling like “Hey, universe! I SEE YOU.” But after spending some time with colleagues in SF, and some time on LinkedIn seeing that there is, in fact, more out there – I know the right thing will happen. Both of my jobs since college have been really special – and I don’t have to settle for not-special, even if I don’t get this one. 

I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like me.

Mr Printz and I are back in the Bay – him for work, me to tag along. I spent yesterday traveling up to the city to visit work friends. Really, I just hung around the office all day and chatted with people when they didn’t look busy. Sidenote: I love Hopelab and everyone who works there so much. 

Taking the BART up to Embarcadero and walking around the Financial District had me feeling very nostalgic. “Oh look, there’s the escalator where I fell and ripped my ankle open!” But really, I used to walk to the Ferry Building on my lunch break, talking to my mom on the phone, telling her about all the things I wanted to show her when she came to visit. I never did get the chance to do that, and it’s a shame. She would have loved all the bougie shops and their gourmet chocolates and cheeses. She would have loved seeing where I worked, and how different San Francisco was from the time she spent there 20 years ago. She would have been scared on the escalators and grumpy when I forgot to pack her a snack – it would have been fabulous.

Talking to colleagues that I hadn’t seen in person since I resigned to move back to Kansas brought up a lot of things I’ve been working to move through or past or something. For the first time in a long time, I had a nightmare about the time I spent with mom in hospice, one that I’ve had before: that it wasn’t over; that even though she had already died, we had to go through it all again. Sometimes, I feel like I was so…ungracious in the process of my mom dying. It was probably the hardest, most painful thing I’ve ever had be a part of. I remember one day she looked at me and said, “This is really hard. This: just waiting to die.”

I always feel the need to say: 1) mom had always indicated to me that she didn’t want to do chemo if it looked like she was close to the end, 2) she made me her medical power of attorney and did not have the cognitive capacity to make the decision herself, and 3) my siblings and I all agreed that we didn’t think mom ever really wanted to do treatment at this stage.

Still, I think I will always feel responsible for it, and I will always feel guilty. Could she have had 2 years with her grandbaby? Could we have taken her to the beach she always wanted?  Is it my fault? Did I bully everyone into it? Was I so unwilling to do the hard work of watching my mom continue to suffer, of facilitating that suffering, that I convinced everyone that hospice was the right option? 

No one else can answer these questions for me. There might not even be a clear cut “yes” or “no.” It might be the grayest of gray areas in my life, and I will just have to live with it. But I am sorry. I am sorry I didn’t get there sooner. I am sorry I was not more willing to push my mom to tell me what was going on. I am sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to do everything I could to keep her alive as long as we could, knowing she would die within the next two years, regardless of all of my efforts. I am sorry I didn’t spend more time sitting with her, that I was too restless and afraid to just be quiet and still. I am sorry that I couldn’t save her, though I know it was not ever my responsibility to do the impossible. 

I find myself facing an indefinite period of unstructured time. I have resigned from my job with the plan of moving home to care for my mother during the end of her life. I have not lined up a full-time (or even a part-time) job. I was planning to enroll in an MLIS program in the fall, but that feels up in the air now with all the uncertainty in front of me.

So what the hell am I going to do?

Continue reading “Nothing Doing, or: The Burden of Time”