Librarian love.

I have a secret to tell you about librarians: the reason people become librarians is not because they love books (although, many do), it's not because they want to get paid to read (I don't know a single librarian who gets to do this), and its not because they live to 'shush' people. It's because they have absolutely no ability to commit to anything.

It's true. Librarians are those people who could never choose a major. We're the people who could never really commit to a future career path. I wanted to be an interior designer, a paleontologist, a bed & breakfast operator, a meteorologist, a speech pathologist, and a museum exhibit designer in college--just in college, mind you. That doesn't even count the millions of professions I decided upon during high school, my first attempt at grad school, the gap between grad school attempt 1 and 2, the academic probationary "break" in the middle of grad school 2, and finally getting my MLS). I have a theory that librarians are the ones who never could settle down with anything in particular. Never stick with anything for very long before they get tired and have to move on. The sort who feel like they would rather scratch the surface of knowledge of tons of topics than delve too deeply into any one in particular. I have absolutely no desire to become an expert on anything. Nothing. It scares the hell out of me to have to devote much time to anything because of what I feel I'll be missing if I focus too long on one thing. I look at my co-librarians and see that we are all very similar in this way. It's both alarming and hilarious to me at the same time. We're an industry full of people who can't stand to tie ourselves down and truly commit to something, so we spend our whole lives committing to the awesomeness of everything for short periods of time.

I find this so true to myself and can laugh at it, to a point. But, it's also sort of frustrating to know you have such a short attention span. Part of it can be blamed on my generation, I guess. Growing up as part of that group who first dealt with computers as children, saw the internet, realized information really was at our fingertips is heady stuff. It's hard to focus when you can flit from one thing to the next, literally at the click of a button. I have a bad habit of dropping things and moving on, leaving things less than tidy in my wake. I have a really bad habit of getting anxious if I start to feel tied down by something. I get the overwhelming urge to flee, regardless of what I leave behind. This happens even during the minutest of things, like if I'm supposed to be driving my car and following people on a trip to somewhere, or if I'm in a group of friends for too long (even just for a long evening). I start to feel really stuck in a situation and I just flee. I push down on the pedal and speed around the leaders and am off, usually to parts unknown. Or, I just take off on my own and walk for a while, whether I know the city my friends and I are in or not. Not the smartest thing to do, but the only way I've ever been able to quell the feeling of being 'stuck'. I'm lucky in that I have a Dad who seems to understand this about me and I've learned that when I feel like this, I can often talk to him and he'll logically punch holes in my anxiety, and soon enough I'm floating back down to my status-quo of happiness and zen while immersing myself in latin dance, origami crane-making, baking, some photo challenge, sewing clothes, searching for the perfect mashed potatoes in town, or whatever interest I happen to be indulging that day.

Even though I frustrate myself with my total lack of commitment, I think it makes me love being a librarian even more, because never at any moment are my co-workers and I interested in the same thing, and this adds such diversity to a workplace. I love it, even when I'm tired of my job and want to flee to Alabama (because Daphne and Fairhope look like the loveliest places), I still love the career that finally chose me.