Sometimes I Get All Virginia Woolf

I have a secret.

Being a librarian is not my primary dream. I know that it really is an aspiration for some, and it’s a noble one. For me, becoming a librarian is a means to support what I really love to do, which is to:

watch solder melt into the perfect seam,
shape supple copper and bronze,
sand sterling silver to a satin finish,
sculpt my ideas in the medium that taught me patience.

I am most content when my hands are rough. I am a tool person. I am anxious most of the time, but never when I am sanding, riveting, annealing, chasing, forging, soldering, raising, sinking, buffing, casting, piercing, oxidizing, drawing, or polishing.

Librarianship is my plan to pursue my true calling, my honest passion. This profession will hopefully help to put food on this artist’s table. Or at least, that was my plan…

I’ve realized lately that the 40-hour/week job I commit to absolutely cannot be devoid of creativity. It is not enough for me to create in my spare time, I have to have the opportunity to engage my artistic side at work. I need to be able to write or design or plan or build.

I have a whole lot to contribute to the library world, and I dearly want the opportunity to do so. I think libraries need artists and all types of people with other kinds of passions and talents. Skills translate, abilities transfer. A demonstrated passion for something is a valuable, marketable trait.

But forty hours of repetitive library work and I will put rocks in my pockets and wade into a river.

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