February 2019

There were 2 posts published in February 2019.

kid weirdo

two small children sitting on a sofa in an old=time sepiaton print

I’ve been focusing on positive self-talk, or at least being aware of negative self-talk, lately. Noting the times when I’m saying to myself “And then you did that thing that screwed it all up” and trying to reframe that feeling/expression somewhat. But there are some expressions that may SOUND like they’re negative, but that really aren’t. I was a weird kid. That’s not negative self-talk, that’s fact. Spacey and solitary, things went fine for me for the most part. I grew up, went to a college for weirdos, and wound up finding my path and things are good. I occasionally struggle, but I don’t feel out of step in my little town here.

I wrote a thing and was interviewed for a thing that both touch on this feeling. One is about Hampshire College and the financial mess that they’re in, maybe closing and maybe not. I both care and don’t care about this. But I was surprised to find that I had some left over grar feelings from back then, and they open the article. The other was a very short piece I wrote about how much Alison Bechdel’s book Fun Home affected me, how much I felt, to use the common parlance, seen. Here are the two pieces:

I’m mostly off my Wikipedia jag which is probably just fine for now. Expect to see it flare up again this time next year.

2018 in work and money

pie chart showing the parts of work taken up with various pursuits, described in the post

This is me starting to do my taxes (in my case, getting my paperwork to my guy) and preferring to do almost anything else. I think the last time I did one of these was at the end of 2016 and it was over at the other blog. Anyhow, this is a percentage-based look at where my work-money comes from. And it’s funny, since for someone who calls herself a librarian, that sliver is pretty small. But I can explain.

That slice, the 1.3%, represents the time Kimball Library pays me to work as a librarian. It doesn’t count drop-in time (27.8%) or writing about libraries (15.2%) or giving talks about libraries (17.6%) or a wide array of other consulting type work (the rest!) which can be anything from helping Wikipedia be better with librarians (I tried) to going to people’s homes and helping them with their network configurations. Also, and I don’t mean to be rude, but librarying doesn’t pay that well. Which is fine, and understandable! But giving a keynote talk at a library conference can easily pay anywhere from five to fifty times as much as an hour of librarying. Which doesn’t mean I’d choose it, it just means that slice is bigger.

I’m retooling my world of work until my sister and I get a little more traction our hopefully-short-lived real estate mogul life which does not suit me. In the meantime, I continue to do all my local stuff including working on the town’s Conservation Commission, being on three committees of the Vermont Humanities Council, and drop-in time isn’t going anywhere. And I keep doing my internet stuff including social media and online work for the Vermont Library Association, writing little articles for Wikipedia, and answering questions in Ask MetaFilter, my first online home.

Just for recordkeeping, here are the new Wikipedia articles I’ve written since last time I checked in. Not trying to be braggy, though I’m aware of the optics, just noting this for future-me as well as trying to highlight just how much it’s a possible thing people can do. And if you want some help, you know where to find me.