I have been wanting to write a post on work-life balance for a while, especially after spending a week at ACRL Assessment Immersion with a bunch of people who are deeply committed to their work and all define balance in their lives differently. Some of the people there are so active in the profession, so plugged-in, publish a ton, travel a ton, and get to meet lots of awesome librarians. Others are dedicated to work during their 40 hrs/wk there and are deeply focused on family and community. Most of us probably fall somewhere in between. And yet we are ALL amazing professionals.

I’ve noticed a tendency in our profession (and probably others) to see being immersed in the profession and spending lots of time outside of our 40 hrs/wk on professional stuff as unhealthy. And at the same time, there’s a tendency to see people who view their work as a librarian as a 9 to 5 job as not committed. To me, the only mistake you can make here is buying into what other people think and not defining balance as what works for you. It’s not about quantity, people, it’s about quality.

Colleen has written a great post about not wanting to feel like her job is her identity and become so immersed in her work that it makes her unhealthy. While I have to say that her “I am a librarian” vs. “I serve as a librarian” distinction doesn’t mean much to me (especially because I do feel like being a librarian is an important part of my identity), I applaud her efforts to find a healthy balance in her life:

Being a librarian for all my waking hours is no longer a model that works for me. … So now I am working on a certain separation of powers, if you will. When I am librarianating, I focus entirely on that, to make sure I am being the best librarian I can be. But I am also now a woman who needs 8 hours of sleep, to make sure that I am also a Rested and Healthy Colleen. I am a student, and when I do that I am Studious Colleen. I’m working on improving my Downtime Colleen self by taking at least one day a week and dedicating it to anything not school- or work-related.

There are a lot of guidelines out there for finding work/life balance, but in my opinion, besides a few (get up from your desk periodically, get enough sleep, don’t ignore the needs of your loved ones, etc.), work/life balance is very subjective. For some people, work/life balance means clocking out at 4 or 5pm and not ever checking work email from home. For others, doing work on some evenings and weekends is the norm. For others, working evenings and weekends is a frequent occurrence. Is any of this a problem? Only if it’s a problem for you.

We all have a pretty set finite amount of time each day to do what we need and want to do (those lucky people who physiologically need less sleep get a bit more than those lazy bums like me who only function well on 8-9 hrs.). Let’s think of that time as a bucket and all the things you need or want to do are glasses of water. Most people probably have a lot more water in their glasses than can fit into their bucket so we have to pick and choose how much from each glass we want to empty into the bucket. Even people who have the exact same types of glasses of water (kids, exercise, tenure, etc.) will pour different amounts in the bucket based on what is most important to them.

Before I had my son, I filled my bucket very differently. Librarianship was a huge portion of my bucket. I wrote long blog posts quite frequently, networked online a ton, traveled often to speak at conferences, and did all sorts of professional projects (Five Weeks to a Social Library, a book, the Library Success Wiki, etc.). People often commented that they were amazed by how much I did professionally and my stock response was “that’s because I have no life.” That wasn’t true. I still did fun things with my husband and friends, went on great vacations, and did a lot of reading. I never felt like anything in particular was missing or that it was unhealthy for me to spend so much time on my work. I found what I did immensely fulfilling.

I had a child full-well knowing that things would change. I knew I would have less time to spend on being professionally active and I was ok with that. The first year and a half after having my son, I did feel out of balance. Between meeting his many needs and barely sleeping for that entire first year, it was hard to find the time or energy for anything else. I also felt guilty every moment I spent outside of my 8-4:30 workday on librarianship. I should be devoting that time to my son. A lot of moms fall into that trap and feel like bad parents when they prioritize activities that don’t revolve around their child. And, at the same time, I missed being professionally active. I missed writing terribly. Over time I realized that as long as the time I did spend with my son was of quality (doing fun things and giving him my undivided attention rather than just sitting around watching TV), it was actually more important that he have a mom who feels fulfilled and happy than one who is with him every waking moment. For some parents, being fulfilled means being with their child all the time, and for some, being fulfilled means being with their child much less than I am. Again, there’s no one definition of balance. What matters is that you and your family feel good about what you’re doing. I’m lucky to have a very supportive husband who would be ok with me taking more time for work, but at 2 1/2, my son is a hell of a lot of fun, and I don’t want to miss much. I am in awe of parents of young children who travel a lot — I’ve realized I’m not built for it, emotionally. That’s why, when I speak in New Zealand at LIANZA next Fall, I’m going to have a 3 1/2 year old (and my husband) in tow. It won’t be the New Zealand trip I’d always dreamed of, but it’s the best option for my heart and we’re going to make it an awesome trip.

For me, I don’t mind doing work at home, whether it’s answering email, working on a document for a committee I’m on, or developing a presentation or an article. What I don’t like is when work issues bleed into the time I’ve dedicated to other activities. Like when I wake up in the middle of the night and obsess about a project, or I come home in a bad mood because of a meeting that went badly. I want to be fully present in whatever I’m doing, so when work prevents me from being “in the moment” with my family (or sleeping through the night), I feel the lack of balance. To me, if anything is objectively bad for people, it’s that. I don’t find that happens very often to me these days, but when I was a child and family psychotherapist, I obsessed about the poor kids I worked with constantly. The problem wasn’t so much about working crazy hours (though I did do most of my paperwork on weekends); it was that I could never be mentally away from work when I was away from work. My mind was going 24/7 and it made me physically and emotionally exhausted.

I don’t think that people seeking a perfect balance are ever going to find it. For one, that balance is constantly shifting based on what’s happening with those different cups of water you’ve poured into your bucket. If my son or husband gets sick, if I’m working under a writing deadline, or even if I’m reading a book that I just… can’t… put… down, I am going to need to shift things around. But also, few people ever have few enough cups that they can pour everything into their bucket. For me, balance is about accepting that I’ll never be able to do as much of everything I want to do as I’d like and being fully present in whatever I am doing. It’s about focusing on what I feel (not other people’s yardsticks and “should’s”) and my family’s needs. As long as I’m doing all that, I feel a balance in my messy and imperfect life.

How do you define balance in your life? Have your notions about balance changed over time or through professional and personal life changes? Do you feel like you have a work-self and a non-work-self and is it preferable to make that distinction?

I am a huge fan of research log and research process reflection assignments. Because research is a means to an end (the paper) and because people are often doing it in a rush, there is little reflection on process. What worked? What didn’t? What can I take from this experience for the next time I have to do something similar? Because this reflection is not usually written into the curriculum, students don’t learn enough from their mistakes or even the good things they did. Having a research log helps students become better researchers in the future and, most importantly, helps them to develop a “system” that works for them.

I definitely remember the many years that I did not have a system for research and writing. Most reference librarians have probably encountered a frantic student who realizes just before his/her paper is due that s/he can’t track down some of the sources they need to cite. Yeah, that was me (though I would have been too embarrassed to come to the reference desk). I probably never followed the same path twice and wasted a lot of time doing things over again because I wasn’t organized. Looking back, I wish a nice librarian had provided an session for me on developing a system for finding, organizing, reading and synthesizing information, because I wasted a lot of time and sweat needlessly.

Now that I have a system, research and writing is much simpler. But being the geek that I am, I’m always interested in improving and refining my process. I’m very interested in how people conduct research online and do their writing these days, especially people who are tech-savvy and information literate. I thought maybe if I shared my own strategies, it might inspire other bloggers to share theirs. Research and writing are often such solitary processes so we don’t often get to see how others approach similar challenges. I want to lift the veil on my own approach. I don’t know if this will be interesting to anyone else, but I’d love to encourage others to share their own tools and strategies so we can learn from each other.

Update: I should add that when I’m not working on a specific writing project, I use delicious and Instapaper to collect items of interest I find. delicious I use for collecting things that may be useful in the future and Instapaper I use for collecting articles and blog posts that I definitely want to read in-depth when I have time (and I often save those things to delicious as well). I have frequently mined my collections in delicious for writing projects later on.

When I get an idea for research/writing project, I start with simple mindmapping. I don’t use anything fancy for that part of the process (though there are plenty of cool online mindmapping tools) — just a piece of paper or a word processing program (whatever I’m in the mood for using at that moment). I brainstorm everything about that topic that I might potentially be interested in. I then turn that mindmap into a research question/topic statement and an outline. That gives me a strong sense of what sort of research I might be looking for. I tend to cast a wide net in my research — information science-related databases, databases in related disciplines (psychology, education, computer science, business, etc.), multidisciplinary databases, Google Scholar, blogs, organizational websites, etc. Anything that looks good I grab the PDF of and throw it into a folder in Dropbox so I can access it from anywhere. If a PDF isn’t available, I print the page as a PDF (thanks PDF Creator). If it’s not an article but a cool example, I’ll make note of it (and its URL) in a separate Word file that I save in the same folder.

Usually, whatever I find has expanded my perspective on the topic, so I tend to go back and modify my outline then. I then see if I’ve found useful material on all areas I’d brainstormed. If not, I might expand the search. Sometimes I discover that certain topics simply aren’t fruitful areas of inquiry and I remove them from my outline.

So now I usually have a tremendous number of PDFs in a folder in Dropbox. I then take my iPad and load all of them up in iAnnotate. There are a lot of annotation tools for iPad and I’ve tried a few of them, but I was most pleased with iAnnotate. Your mileage may vary. (There was an awesome guide to PDF annotation tools for iPad published recently, but I can’t seem to track it down now.) iAnnotate works beautifully with downloading from and uploading to Dropbox, so it’s a perfect fit for me. When I wrote my book, Social Software in Libraries, I printed out just about everything I read. I’ve never been able to do deep reading on a computer so I ended up with an obscene amount of paper that I kept for many years and finally gave up on the fantasy that I’d ever use them again. When I got an iPad, I was hoping to find something that would allow me to read an article, highlight text, and take notes on the document itself. iAnnotate fits the bill and puts all of my reading at arm’s reach. I can read at lunch, before meetings, while waiting at the doctor’s office, in bed, etc. It has definitely boosted my productivity.

A semi-related aside: Last weekend, my son was watching the movie, Babe, and I was reading articles for a book chapter I’m currently writing. My son climbed up into my lap and and I cuddled with him while reading scholarly articles on M-learning. I stopped and thought “man, if this isn’t the picture of the tenure-track mother I don’t know what is!” Sigh…

I first quickly skim through each article and decide if it’s worth reading and annotating. If not, I remove it from iAnnotate and from Dropbox. If it is, I read and mark it up. When I’m done with all of them, I upload back to Dropbox so the annotated versions of the articles can be read anywhere.

Next stop, Mendeley. For those who don’t already know about it, Mendeley is a desktop citation management tool, similar to Zotero in functionality (I like Zotero a lot too, but found Mendeley a better fit for me). Additionally, it’s an excellent social network for scholars and can also function as a tool for discovering additional research. I usually search Mendeley for my topic(s) as well because it’s searching a library of things that other scholars thought worth adding to their own Mendeley library (similar logic to searching del.icio.us in addition to Google). Now that I’ve got the definitive list of what articles I plan to use and they’re marked up in my Dropbox folder, I import all of the files from that folder into Mendeley. There are obviously many points at which you could pull stuff into Mendeley. You could do it directly from the database/website you’re getting the article from. I just like to do it at this point because I get the annotated PDFs into Mendeley and only the ones I might need to cite.

Mendeley usually does a decent job identifying the bibliographic information from the PDF, but invariably, I have to do a little work on it. One thing I love about Mendeley is its PDF reader within the program itself (which actually has annotation features too). I pull up each PDF and check it against the citation info Mendeley created (they are displayed side-by-side). I then fix any errors in the citation. If I’m using books or websites, I add them to Mendeley as well at this point (using the Mendeley web importer for website and that with WorldCat Local for books). I then create a bibliography of all of these resources in MS Word. Using this file, I now copy and paste anything I highlighted from each article into the document under the citation for that article. I also add useful notes from books as well. I print this out and use it to flesh out my original outline. The document helps me to easily remember where I got ideas from rather than looking at 20, 30 or 60 different sources. My outline now has authors names next to each topic, reminding me of what I should look at when I’m at that point in my writing. I print the outline as well.

As I write my lit review, I use the outline, the document with all of the highlighted content, the document with the cool examples, and the articles themselves. I use both my iPad and my computer at this point. I write on my computer (in MS Word — I know there are cool writing apps that prevent you from being distracted, but I do fine with Word), but I access the articles from my iPad using the Mendeley app. The Mendeley app is great for accessing your citations and the articles themselves on the go (note: it also works on an iPhone). I use Mendeley’s Word plugin to insert citations and format the bibliography.

And that’s basically it! As far as tools, Mendeley and iAnnotate have really improved my writing and research experience, but more important than that is the fact that I have a system. I’ve discovered a way of organizing my thoughts, finding and organizing sources, and bringing the two together that works for me. We’re all different. We all have quirks that influence our strategies. My major quirk is that I write better in bed than anywhere else. Sitting up at a desk and doing a lot of writing is incredibly difficult for me, so you won’t often find me doing substantial work on an article in my office at work. I have a friend who writes best when we writes in longhand. For him, perhaps, something like LiveScribe, a handwriting app for iPad, and/or a PDF annotation tool that is focused on handwritten annotations would work well.

So I’m curious; what’s your process? What tools help you do research and write? What research or writing quirks so you have and how has that influenced the system you’ve chosen? While I have a system, it is constantly evolving (I only switched from Zotero to Mendeley this past summer) and I’m always looking for better ways to do things. Aren’t we all?

I’ve never felt like a particularly optimistic person. When we were getting ready to move to Portland, I fully expected that we’d lose furniture on the way or that much of it would arrive severely damaged. It didn’t happen. I expected my son to scream and cry the entire way from my parents’ house in Florida to the airport in Portland. He was great, or at least as great as a 2-year-old can be on a cross-country trip. I’ve always identified with Eeyore who expects the worst to happen and perhaps is pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t. Like Eeyore, it’s probably just a defense mechanism against disappointment.

I know a lot of optimistic people; people who see the good in everything and never seem to let things get them down. I’ve never thought of myself as being that way. I’m not cheerful to a fault. Some things really do get me down. However, last weekend, I was visiting the Evergreen Air and Space Museum with my family and spied this quote from Winston Churchill on the wall: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” When I read that, I realized that I am an optimist, at least in my worklife. In every crisis, I see opportunities to jump in and create change. I like when things get destabilized a bit and people are forced to leave their comfort zones. Every big change at my previous institution turned into an opportunity to try something different.

My new library is definitely in that place right now. The person with whom I interviewed who was supposed to have been my supervisor left a month before I started. The interim AUL for Public Services is a rock-solid, knowledgeable guy with a long history at PSU, but he’s interim, which is a tricky position to be in when it comes to pushing an agenda for change. Since then, there has been another major administrative shakeup, leaving the library faculty and staff uncertain about what the next few years will look like in terms of leadership. Our funding has been cut, our tenure status challenged by administration, and a number of people here seem to think that we won’t be able to proceed with much over the next few years.

Some of my colleagues have asked me if all this is making me regret coming or lose hope in actually getting things done. While it’s definitely upset the apple cart on many levels, I still feel quite excited about my job and optimistic that there’s a lot I can do to improve our instruction program. There’s a strong desire amongst my colleagues to develop goals and a sense of direction around instruction. Many would like to see opportunities to share ideas about instruction and learn from one another. Perhaps with us stretched so thinly, I won’t be able to do some of the things that require extra work of the liaisons, but I can do things that will help support their teaching, develop learning outcomes that provide a sense of coherence to our instruction program, and explore ways to provide better instructional outreach to faculty and distance learners (an area in which we are currently pretty far behind).

I’m pretty excited to see how things will shape up here over the next year. Without question, a lot is going to change (probably for better and worse), but in every shakeup, there are usually plenty of opportunities for doing new things. And not being particularly attached yet to “the way thing are done” is going to make it much easier for me to ride the shift and take advantage of its destabilizing forces. Here’s hoping!

Greetings from Portland, Oregon! I’ve been wanting to post about so many things in the past two months (especially just about everything Barbara Fister has been writing over at Library Babel Fish — gosh she is insightful!), but it’s been difficult to find the time. The learning curve at my new place of work has been steep and I really hit the ground running (which I actually appreciated, having been in jobs where I spent weeks just reading policy manuals). Also, I’ve really needed to focus on ensuring that Reed’s adjustment to Oregon, daycare and everything else went smoothly. Fortunately, Reed’s really taken to the area and his new school. He love all the playgrounds, museums and activities geared towards kids. Living somewhere with more opportunities for Reed was a big part of why we wanted to leave Vermont. As for me, I’m loving Portland. The city is unlike any I’ve been to before. I love the interesting neighborhoods, each with their own unique culture. I’m loving the food trucks, farmers’ markets, and the local food culture. It’s really got everything I’ve always loved about cities without many of the things that previously made me never want to live in/near one (noise, rude people, smelliness, etc.). I’m so happy we made this move!

As for the job, gosh, what can I say? I’m amazed by how busy I already am. It’s going to be an exciting challenge, that’s for sure. I really like the people I’m working with; they’re smart, thoughtful and argue passionately for the things they believe in. I think it’s going to be more challenging than I’d anticipated to accomplish the things I need to do as the Head of Instructional Services. The culture at the library (and the University really) is very decentralized and everyone doing instruction is used to doing their own thing without oversight or coordination. Coupling that with the departure of some key people at the library and it’s going to be hard to do anything more than keeping up the status quo. But we, as a library, urgently need to change. We need to create a culture of assessment where we can demonstrate the value we provide (in terms of student success and faculty research) to campus administration. Over the past decade, the library has sustained funding cuts and little growth in personnel while the university has grown tremendously. This indicates pretty strongly that the library has not been an administrative funding priority and we need to find ways of telling our story to those administrators that will convince them of our value. It certainly indicates a strong need for my position, which everyone I talk to recognizes. Even with that recognition, it’s difficult to make cultural changes, especially at a time of upheaval at the library. I’m optimistic though; I like a good challenge.

As someone who is very interested in organizational culture, it’s exciting to work in one so different from my previous experiences. At Norwich, we had very few meetings and were more of an adhocracy where if someone had the drive and initiative to make something happen, they usually just did it. If I had an idea, I’d just pop into my Director’s office and ask her if she thought I should give it a try. In four weeks at Portland State, I’ve probably been to more meetings than I went to in my entire last year at Norwich. Everything is decided by committee or task force, and it seems like there’s a real effort to come to a consensus on things. There are many policies and procedures for how things are done, which is certainly more necessary at a large library. As a result, things move more slowly. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing; we did some things at Norwich with very little forethought that probably could have been better planned out. I’ve really appreciated the thoughtful discussions we’ve engaged in on the Library Guides Taskforce already; it’s a bunch of really smart people coming at the topic from different perspectives. On the other hand, so much red tape leaves much less room for experimentation and innovation. I’ve always felt like the mark of a great administrator is to be able to get things done in any sort of organizational environment, since, more often than not, organizational culture is exceedingly difficult to change on a grand scale. Since I hope to be an administrator in the future, I’m thrilled to have the chance to try my hand at working within this very different culture.

Right now I’m engaged in a survey of our instruction program. I’m interviewing every individual involved in any aspect of library instruction from tours for high school students all the way up to discipline-specific classes for grad students. I want to have a very clear picture of what our instruction program looks like, what’s working and what isn’t, what could be improved, what people would like to see change, and how I might be able to create more of a team mentality among this diverse group of individual instructors. I’ve done four interviews so far and it’s been extremely valuable to get their perspectives, since each individual has very different views and priorities. Every instruction coordinator should do something like this when they come into the position, even if they were promoted to it from within their library.

I’ve got a ton of stuff going on right now — preparing for a keynote I’m giving in Missouri on June 7th, getting ready for the class I’m going to be teaching for SJSU this summer, and trying to figure out what I want to research so I can actually stay in my tenure-track job — so I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to post. But I have so many thoughts swirling in my head about instruction, especially the best way to provide information literacy instruction to first-year students, and blogging has always been a great way for me to process my own ideas and get valuable feedback from other members of the profession. I really miss blogging as much as I used to. I just need to find a way to fit everything into my life. I guess this is what every working parent deals with and while I feel like I have struck a much better work/life balance than I had in the past, I’m still struggling to find a sense of balance that doesn’t leave me constantly questioning my choices. When I’m with Reed, I feel like I should be focusing more on work. When I’m focusing on work, I miss Reed horribly. And time for me? That isn’t even part of the equation right now. While I’m optimistic about a lot of things in my life, I’m not optimistic that I’ll ever feel balance in my life again (at least until Reed’s in college). Is it worth it though, to have a wonderful child and a wonderful job? You bet!

Roy Tennant wrote a terrific post recently about his work habits and personality the other day that got me thinking (see “Living the Just in Time Life”). My first thought was “wow, it’s amazing how much Roy and I like each other given how completely differently we operate.” My second thought was how important it is to know these things about oneself. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses, knowing how you work best… all of these are critical to being successful in our lives. I know people who have terrible memories and instead of writing things down, they stubbornly hold onto the idea that they can remember the things they need to do. I think sometimes, when it comes to things about yourself that probably won’t change, it’s important to accept those things and devise strategies to make them work for you.

I remember when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, every time I’d move (to high school, college, a new place, etc.) I’d think that things were going to change in major ways. I could start fresh! I could have a totally different personality in college! I could be so cool in high school! But, nothing major ever really changed. I could move across the country, go to a new school where no one new me, change jobs, etc., but I was still me. And what was good and bad about me still followed me wherever I went. Sure, I’ve changed in many ways over the years, but there are certain aspects of who I am that will never change; that I was born with. I certainly see that with my own son. At almost two, he already has his own very strong personality and it’s not one that I or his father are going to be very successful in changing (nor would we want to).

Over the past 6 years, I have come to know myself much better than ever I did in my early 20s. More importantly, I’ve come to to find strategies for dealing with my weaknesses (rather than thinking I’m going to change in some major, fundamental way) and capitalize on my strengths. I have changed in many ways — I’ve certainly become more patient, more understanding, and more of a leader during the past six years since graduating from library school — but certain things are fundamentally and immutably me:

I’m a slow thinker – I admire Roy for being able to live the “just in time life”, because it’s not me at all. I like to really think about things before making a statement. Speaking off-the-cuff is not my forte. I love blogging because it gives me the time to really consider an issue and reflect on my feelings about it. I like giving talks, because in creating the slides, I have time to think about what I want to say about each one. I don’t create a script, nor do I do much in the way of rehearsal anymore, but I’m not a person comfortable with being part of a keynote presentation only moments after I find out I’m doing it. I admire people like Marshall, Roy and Stephen who can.

I’m stubborn – and I’ve always been that way. I drove my parents nuts growing up because I was ridiculously independent and wanted to do things my way. While sometimes being stubborn bites me in the butt (and makes my husband want to throttle me), I’ve found it to be a great asset in my professional life when combined with my increasing patience. When I saw online professional development being done badly, I came up with a model for free online learning about social technologies that has inspired various other continuing education initiatives. When I see something I think needs to change, I will try to chip away at it (for years if necessary) because I believe so strongly in it. I don’t lose interest, even when I hit brick walls. And in academia, that stick-to-it-iveness is critical, because change rarely moves at the pace I’d like it to.

I’m actually finding my own stubbornness to be an asset in dealing with my son, who is also an extremely strong-willed individual. It’s his way or the highway, but because I know that mentality, I’m pretty good at working within his worldview to get him to do things. Reed’s stubbornness drives me crazy sometimes, but I know that independence is going to be a great asset to him in the long-run.

I always assume that I’m not the norm – I guess I’ve always thought I was kind of weird, so my assumption pretty much every time I write a blog post is that what I’m writing is way out in left field. Usually, I find that’s not the case, but I continue to feel most of the time that whatever my view is on something couldn’t possibly be shared by most people. This is a tremendous asset when it comes to designing services, technologies and websites for students. I never assume that students share my feelings, beliefs or wants. I always want to find out how they approach things. It’s our assumptions about our patrons that lead to unusable websites and services only a librarian could love.

I don’t deal well with stress and I don’t procrastinate – Stress is a tough one for me, but I’ve always known this about myself. When I feel the weight of a deadline on me, I start to sweat. Instead of sweating the deadlines, I’ve developed my own strategies for avoiding stress; I’m ridiculously organized and I plan ahead. And it works beautifully for me. The minute I took the job in Portland, I mapped out everything that needed to be done before we moved on April 2nd. I have a spreadsheet with the contents of every box I’ve packed. Even in high school, I usually would have papers done at least a week before they were due, so that I wouldn’t have them hanging over my head. It works for me because it prevents me from getting frazzled.

My little strategy for avoiding stress has made me a great project manager. I’m organized and am good at keeping people on track. I always expect things to go wrong so I plan for potential roadblocks and others not pulling their weight.

I’m a terrible multitasker – and accepting this has made me a better learner. I’m a one channel at a time kind of person. I can’t send emails while writing a report for work, watch TV and talk to my husband, or follow tweets while listening to a conference presentation. Inevitably one of the two things will suffer, if not both. At Computers in Libraries last year, I brought a small (paper) notebook to each session I attended instead of a laptop and got so much more out of the sessions than when I was distracted by what was on my screen. I admire people who can multitask, but I also suspect that a lot of the people who think they can probably can’t.

When you’re not a good multitasker, it’s helpful to be very organized so that you can carve out chunks of time for different responsibilities.

I’m shy – I know this may come as a surprise to most people who know me, but at my core, I am an introvert. I’m extremely outgoing with people I know, but when I’m around folks I don’t (especially in social situations), I become quite reserved. Small talk is my worst enemy. I’m far more comfortable giving a presentation in front of 300 people than engaging in small talk at a party. It’s probably the one thing I most wish I could change about myself, because there’s no good strategy other than avoidance or wallowing in the discomfort.

I always trust my gut – My gut has never steered me wrong; even when my logical brain told me to do the opposite. My gut told me to turn down a lucrative fellowship to the LIS program at the University of Maryland to stay in Florida with the guy I’d only been dating a month. That guy is now my husband. My gut told me I’d love living in the state of Vermont, a place I’d never visited in my life. I have so enjoyed my years in Vermont. My gut has also steered me away from jobs and places that on paper seemed to be the right thing to do, and it’s always turned out that I was smart not to have taken those opportunities. My gut steered me toward Portland, even though I love my work at Norwich and love Vermont. I feel in my bones that it’s going to be a good place to raise my son and that PSU is going to be an awesome place to work. Let’s hope my gut keeps up its winning streak!

There are plenty of things I’d like to change about myself. I’d love to be a social butterfly. I wish I didn’t daydream so much. I wish I could sometimes be less emotionally involved in my work. I wish I could be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on 4 hours of sleep. I wish I liked exercising and eating broccoli. But these things are not going to change and the key, for me at least, is to accept that and find ways to be successful within my personal laundry list of strengths and limitations (and those things that count as both). Denial serves no one. Believing that one day I could be ok with “phoning it in” at work or that I’ll wake up at 6am wanting to get on the elliptical only keeps me from finding strategies to deal with who I really am. I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got. And after so many years of wanting to be someone else, I’m truly happy with who I am and what I’ve accomplished.

This is a post mainly for those professionals who are passionate about their careers and are considering having children but wonder/worry what impact it might have on their life and their career. I’m going to talk about my own experience finding an identity as a working mother over the past year. Remember that your mileage may vary — there is no telling what you’re going to feel when you have a child and how that will impact your life and your feelings about work.

This was one of my biggest concerns before Adam and I decided to get pregnant, and, unfortunately, the women I talked to about being a parent didn’t fill me with confidence that I’d be able to balance work and family well. I heard from women who told me that they’d become less ambitious once they had children; women who hated leaving their child at daycare but didn’t have a choice; women who worked 9-to-5, took care of their children and never did anything else; women who could count on one hand the number of times they spent alone time with their spouse in years; and women who chose to stay home with their children. Since Adam and I both had mothers who stayed home with us, we didn’t have many exemplars of mothers who successfully and happily balanced work and family. My mother was actually horrified at first that I was going to send Reed to a daycare. I felt like I couldn’t win.

My biggest worry when I had Reed was that I would want to stay home with him forever when that simply wasn’t financially feasible. I was envious of my former colleague (who had her baby a week before I did) who decided to quit her job and stay home with her daughter. I felt like I would miss so much time with my son and wouldn’t be able to bond with him as well. While, at first, it was hard to comprehend being away from him, I am so glad that I go to work and that he goes to daycare.

A good daycare is one of the best things for a child’s social development. When I get the chance to watch Reed at daycare, I see all of the opportunities he has to learn about sharing, about interacting with other children and adults, about bonding with people other than his parents, and about social play. Just today, I saw him and a little girl trying to play with the same toy — learning how to deal with this simply isn’t something he’s going to get from being home all day, and (most) playgroups are often play mediated by mothers. I’m fortunate that Reed immediately took to being in daycare when we started him in it at 4 months — he’s an incredibly social and high-energy little boy, so being around different people perfectly suits his personality. I very quickly felt comfortable leaving Reed at daycare, because I didn’t feel like it was a second-best/no-other-choice option for childcare — I really do think he’s better off there. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with staying home with your child; this is just what works for us.

I also realized that I need my identity as a professional. I like going to work, interacting with adults and working on projects. I like giving talks, writing articles and taking part in professional conversations. While I think about Reed when I’m at work, I don’t wish I was home with him. Any concerns I had about my losing my ambitions after having a child went out the window shortly after going back to work. My priorities have not changed. Family was always first — I chose not to write a second book a few years ago because I didn’t want to put such a burden on my husband in taking care of the household. I’m still passionate about my work and it’s just as important to me as it was before. I think the only thing that’s changed is how I manage my time. I don’t have the luxury of coming home from work and writing a blog post or working on an article — I have a sweet little boy play with, feed, bathe and put to bed (and, frankly, I wouldn’t trade that time with him for anything, no matter how tired I am when I get home). I have to find little pieces of time here and there (naps, after Reed goes to bed, Monday mornings since I work a night reference shift, etc.) and obviously can’t do as much as I used to. But I’ve lost none of the passion I had before for technology and our profession.

With all of the (bad) advice being thrown at new mothers, it can be incredibly difficult to find your identity as a mother. I found that many mothers were all about guilt-trips and one-upsmanship. You don’t use cloth diapers? You don’t breastfeed exclusively? You feed your child baby food from a jar? You leave your child with someone else so you and your husband can spend some alone time together? I got the sense from reading books, articles, and (especially) discussion boards that my entire life should revolve around my child since one wrong choice could have terrible consequences, and that having a child would require me to be completely selfless and put my own desires at the bottom of the pile. And I bought into it for a while.

The hardest thing about the first few months after having Reed was letting go of all the expectations I put on myself because I thought that was how a mother was supposed to be. I made myself so miserable trying to be someone I’m not and trying to do things that simply weren’t working for any of us because I thought I had to. Part of it was crazy post-pregnancy hormones and postpartum depression (an issue I never talked to anyone about at the time other than my doctor and my husband), but I feel strongly that a lot of it was my unwillingness to let go of this idea that I had to martyr myself to my child’s needs. I have to wonder how much postpartum depression is caused by these unrealistic expectations people have for themselves as new mothers and what happens when their expectations don’t mesh with the reality.

If anything, I’m more selfish now than I was before having a child. I’m very protective of my time and say “no” to doing a lot of things that I would have said “yes” to a year ago. I work hard to ensure that my husband and I make our relationship a priority, even if it means leaving my precious child with his grandparents while we spend a night at a hotel (which is exactly what we’re doing this Sunday — woo hoo!). And I do things for myself or buy things for myself that make me happy. I realized after that very scary episode with postpartum depression (my first major depressive episode since I was 19) that I need to make myself happy to be a good mother to Reed. Happy mommy = happy baby. So I’ve learned how to balance taking care of me and my marriage with taking care of my little boy. And judging by how happy and mellow he is most of the time, I’d say I’m doing an o.k. job at it.

I’ll also say that having a good work/family/fun balance depends greatly on having a supportive partner (with an emphasis on the word partner). My husband is a partner in every sense of the word — we parent and take care of the house 50-50. He is so wonderful with Reed and there’s nothing I enjoy more than watching Reed climb on his dad and seeing the smiles they both have when they look into each other’s eyes. Without Adam, I can’t imagine making this all work. Thanks hon!

I wish someone had told me all these things when I was thinking about having a child. Yes, you can still be ambitious in your career — you may have to spend less time speaking at conferences and writing books, but you don’t have to give it up altogether. It’s not only ok for you to send your child to daycare, but it might actually be the best thing for him or her. You can be selfish and still be a good mother. If you decide to get an extra hour of sleep instead of making your child’s baby food yourself, he or she won’t be irrevocably scarred by eating food from a jar. That what’s most important is that your child is loved and well cared-for and so many of the other things you think are important when you read baby books or magazine articles really aren’t.

So if you’re on the fence about having a child because you feel like you might have to give up being who you are, realize that choice is up to you. You can still be the passionate, hard-working professional you are and be a great parent — the only thing you’ll absolutely have to change is how you allocate your time. I also wish that someone had told me how much fun it is to have a child. Everyone tells you it’ll change your life, you’ll never sleep again, you’ll never go out to the movies again, etc., but you never hear enough about the awesomeness of parenthood. Reed is really the most fun person I’ve ever known and I treasure every minute I spend with him. I feel so lucky to be his mom. Parenthood isn’t for everyone, but it’s a far more fun and awesome adventure than I’d ever expected.

Going into a new decade (I know technically it’s not a new decade until 2011, but don’t be such a kill-joy!) is a good time for reflection. After seeing all of the #10yearsago posts on Twitter, I started to think about where I was 10 years ago vs. where I am today. My life could not be more different. At 22, I was in graduate school in Tallahassee (for social work, which I was already having second thoughts about by then), was in a dead-end relationship (one of several I’d have before meeting Adam), and was rather rootless (I lived in 6 apartments between 2000 and 2005 before finally settling in Vermont). I felt rudderless in my life back then. I was always looking for something. I read philosophy and religion books and went to many different types of religious services basically looking for a sense of direction or purpose in my life. Funny, that when I stopped looking and started living in the present, I was a much happier person. I’ve learned so much over the past 10 years about being myself, doing things that scare me, and having a more flexible vision of my future. Now I’m married, I have a baby, I own a home, I am in a career I love, and I’ve had professional success beyond my wildest dreams. I’m happy with who I am and where I am in my life.

I think many of the most important lessons I’ve learned are important ones for all of us in our careers:

1. Leaps of faith often pay off (or better to fail or succeed at the right thing than be successful at the wrong one) – When I first considered the possibility of leaving the social work field for librarianship, I was extremely nervous about it. I’d already gotten one graduate degree that didn’t lead to a satisfying career, and I didn’t relish the idea of getting (nor could I afford to get) another one in a field that I may not end up fitting into either. But something in my gut told me I should do it; that it would be a right fit for me. I took that leap and have never regretted it. I’d gone to graduate school for social work more out of fear than anything else — I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do after college, but I was interested in mental health issues and dove into that for lack of a better idea. Grad school was a safe space away from the scary world of work. Going to library school was the opposite of safe — leaving a professional psychotherapist position to go make $10/hr at a public library while paying for graduate school.

That leads me to the second lesson I learned — 2. the biggest growth experiences come from doing things that scare you – I spent so much time in my earlier years not doing things out of fear. In college, I wrote a lot of poetry and short stories, but I never submitted them to any of the literary magazines at Wesleyan. Because I was afraid of speaking in class, I avoided a lot of great seminars and instead took larger lecture classes that were far less interesting/satisfying. I let fear make my decisions for me. I guess now I do that too, only in the opposite way. I was so afraid to speak in public; more afraid than I can express. But because of my blog and book deal, people kept asking me to speak and I felt like I’d be a fool to say no. Anyone who saw me before my first talk at Computers in Libraries in 2006 can tell you that I was nervous beyond reason. But I gave the talk. And it wasn’t so bad. In fact, I found that I rather enjoyed the excited/nervous adrenaline rush I got from the experience. I’ve become a much better speaker than I was then, but I still get that nervous adrenaline rush before I speak, and I think it makes me a better/higher energy speaker for it. From leaning into my fear, I’ve learned that I’m so much more capable than I initially believed I was.

Recently, a colleague of mine forgot that he had scheduled an instruction session for an English 101 class at 11am and was not planning on coming in that day until 1pm. I only found out about this when the professor and her class showed up at 11am and no one was there to teach them. I had to sprint to get set up and taught a class I had done literally no preparation for and just found out about their assignment that very moment. And, ironically, it ended up being one of the best classes I’ve taught in recent memory. I was high-energy and I think the students really fed off that because they were much more engaged and involved than in most classes I teach. I realized that perhaps I’ve gotten a little too comfortable with my instruction work and that maybe I need to shake it up a bit and try new things that might be a little scary and that might blow up in my face. Because I’m at my best when that adrenaline is flowing.

3. Don’t sell yourself short – What in the world could someone who just got their library degree possibly have to teach experienced librarians about social software? What makes you think you could write an entire book and who in the world will read it? These were just a few of the negative thoughts that swirled around my head at the start of my library career. I didn’t think I possibly had anything useful to offer people, having only been a professional librarian a few short months before getting my book deal. I remember when I was going to give a keynote at UC Berkeley on what the 2.0 organization looks like, I thought I’d get laughed off the stage, since what the hell do I know, not having even been a manager? Even recently, I was asked to write a brief essay for a symposium at ALA Midwinter and wanted to back out when I saw the list of heavy hitters who would also be contributing. While I’ve heard some librarians call me a “rock star”, I still often feel like I just graduated from the kids table.

I may not have the depth of experience of someone who has worked in the profession 30 years. I may not be as tech-savvy as a John Blyberg or a Jason Griffey. I may not be as humorous as a Steve Lawson or an Andrew Pace. I may not be as brilliant and articulate as a Dorothea Salo. But I’ve learned (and am still learning) that it’s ok. I don’t need to be all those things. I don’t need to have all the answers. I bring something different to the table that also has value. People find my perspective unique and interesting, so I don’t need to be like all of those other people as long as I am myself.

I remember being on a panel last summer with a colleague whom I admire greatly. She said that she was so nervous being on a panel with “rock stars.” Funny, because she’s a rock star to me with her passion for the profession and effervescent personality. The fact is, we all have moments where we feel intimidated; even the people we admire do. We all bring something special to the table, and as long as we’re being ourselves and not trying to be Dorothea Salo, Roy Tennant or John Blyberg, we’re probably going to rock it. Because the other lesson that I learned is that 4. you’ll be much happier and more successful when you stop trying to be like other people and start just being yourself. Trying to be like someone else is a lot of work and is rarely satisfying. Embracing who you are and what you have to offer the profession/your community/the world is the best thing — both for yourself and the people who will be able to benefit from your “you-ness.”

5. Don’t get too stuck on a specific vision of your future – My husband is nothing like the kind of guy I thought I wanted to marry. I was into the “sensitive guy” type who liked literature, jazz, indie films, etc. My husband listens to Metallica, likes movies like “Escape from New York,” and hasn’t read anything remotely literary since high school. But he ended up being my soul mate, and had I been stuck on that vision of the sort of guy I wanted to be with, I would never have gone on a second date with him. I had a friend (in her 30s at the time) who was so stuck on a specific vision of what the man she would consider getting serious with should be like that she was constantly rejecting perfectly nice guys she’d date for the silliest of reasons. As a result, she was lonely, but felt that she could not compromise on these silly standards of hers.

You might think that there’s only one type of job that is right for you in the library field. You might be sure that there are other things you would hate doing, based on a hunch. Consider for a moment that you might be wrong. I thought that I absolutely did not want to do face to face instruction when I got out of grad school, and yet, once I gave it a try, I found it was one of the things I most enjoyed. Now I’m the head of instruction at my library — go figure! Open yourself up to interesting possibilities. In this job market, there may simply not be any positions in the area in which you’re interested in working. Being flexible does not mean doing something you absolutely won’t enjoy (just like being flexible doesn’t mean dating someone you absolutely aren’t interested in), but it means being open to the possibility that there could be other options out there that you’d like as much (if not more!).

6. You don’t need to keep going to school to keep learning — I remember thinking when I was in college that I’d like to go to school forever so that I could keep taking classes and learning new things. I wanted a PhD in History, not because I wanted to teach, but because I wanted to keep learning and researching and writing. While I’m not taking classes anymore, I’ve discovered that it’s easy to keep the learning going and recreate the experience of the classroom in the online world. While I may not have one specific teacher, the whole Internet has become my teacher. I’ve created my own personal learning environment (PLE) through blogs, RSS feeds, journals, books (well, not so much lately), and — most importantly — my network on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and in the blogosphere. Because it’s the conversation that really makes the learning meaningful — the reflection, discussion, disagreement, sharing of experiences, and learning from others’ experiences. I am so grateful to be part of a community of brilliant, thoughtful and generous individuals who have taught me so much over the past 5 years.

I’d meant to publish this on December 31st or January 1st, but, as usual, life (or Reed pulling books off the shelf, trying to open the kitchen cabinets, or climbing me) trumped blogging. I’m glad my life is trumping blogging, because it’s an awesome life and watching Reed grow up is a fantastic reason to not be online. That’s not to say that I don’t miss blogging. I miss having an outlet for my thoughts and the time to write them out/work them out online. I miss the conversations. I miss a lot of things. But I’m coming to accept that I can’t have it all. I hope finding a better balance between work/teaching/speaking/baby/husband/friends/blogging/etc. will be one of the things I learn next year. And hopefully as Reed becomes more independent (he’s crawling, standing and cruising already!) I’ll have more time for non-Reed things.

My New Year’s wish — may the good things in all of your lives trump blogging, tweeting, etc. this year. We should all be so lucky.

This is part of the Library Day in the Life meme going on this week. What an awesome idea!

I cheated on this a little — I wrote this up on Thursday since I’m not working until Wednesday. Until mid-August, I’m only working 2 days per week so that Reed can wait until he’s 4 months old to start daycare. I’ll also write up the days I work this week (Wednesday and Thursday).

So here’s a day in my life as a Head of Instructional Initiatives. I don’t think this is a particularly typical day since the students aren’t here so I’m not teaching, but I also don’t think I even have “typical days” during the school year.

8:00 – arrived at work with husband and Reed in tow since I can’t drive due to a sprained shoulder. Colleagues oohed and ahhed over Reed (who wouldn’t?)

8:10 – Fed Reed while computer booted up and went through several updates

8:30 – Checked email and talked to colleague about redesigning our web portal for distance learners (which we just found out we got funding for – awesome!) . We’re going Drupal, baby!

9:00 – Engineering liaison and I met with Dean of the School of Engineering and Civil Engineering faculty member about information literacy instruction for engineering students. It was a great meeting because we all pretty much wanted the exact same thing (problem-based active learning, teaching students to critically evaluate sources, etc.). We’ll be teaching 6 3-hour classes in the Fall, reaching all of the Freshmen engineering majors. YAY! Also talked to them about getting library instruction in somewhere else in the curriculum, like when they have their big senior project and have to do all sorts of in-depth research. It was something they hadn’t considered, but they seemed open to the idea. I talked about what I’ve done with the senior History seminars.

10:00 – Checked reference email accounts and answered several reference questions that came in overnight.

10:30 – opened up spreadsheet of journals in the social sciences and continued to work on making cuts. Mulling over whether to cancel some journals that we get in EBSCO with a one year embargo, since we could get the articles for students and faculty through ILL. It drives me crazy to be paying $1000-$3000 for essentially one year’s worth of content.

10:45 – Emailed political science faculty member with a list of journals I’m considering cutting and requesting feedback. Put a few on the list that I doubt I’ll cancel, but I wanted his feedback as to whether it was an essential title or not.

11:00 – Pumped some milk for Reed (ah, the joys of being a working mom) – browsed RSS feeds during that time.

11:30 – Worked on a course guide for a senior seminar on the Civil War in which I’ll be providing library instruction in September. There are way too many resources on the Civil War and it can be hard to create a guide that includes only the best/essential resources.

11:45 – Spoke to a Drupal developer about the redesign of our library portal for distance learners. His company seems to be the Cadillac of Drupal web redesigns. Very impressive, but we don’t need all the bells and whistles and those bells and whistles come with a hefty price tag.

12:30 – Ate a quick lunch while going through the journal spreadsheet. Why is it that I love trimming the fat off our budget? It’s like spring cleaning. I’m hoping to cut enough that we can get some collections we really need that will likely get a lot of use. Students use databases much more than single title subscriptions.

1:00 – Worked on getting quotes and hourly rates from Drupal-experienced web designers. Hit up folks on Twitter and Friend Feed for suggestions. Got some crazy expensive quotes and some reasonable ones. Continued to check reference email accounts and answered a couple more email queries.

1:45 – D’oh! Forgot that I was supposed to be on Meebo. Quickly logged in.

2:00 – talked to colleague about cutting journals and making the difficult decisions. We both tend to not be as sentimental about the collection as some of our colleagues, so he’s always a good person to get advice from.

2:30 – Put in more work on the Civil War course guide.

3:30 – Asked colleague if we could get usage stats for political science journals I’m considering canceling as faculty member has requested them. Got click-through stats from Serials Solutions and sent them on. Ugh – only 5 hits in two years for one of the journals (and not a cheap one either).

3:45 – Emailed criminal justice faculty about journals I’m considering canceling. Got a quick response about a one that they consider essential and a few that they’d rather not lose if at all possible. Will really depend on how much the SAGE collection they want us to get costs.

4:00 – More milk making and RSS feed browsing

4:20 – Glanced at email and saw one about Freshman orientations (for which there is a library component). We did a fun activity last year, but it was a heck of a lot of work, so I’m a little nervous about prepping for it on my limited schedule.

4:30 – Shut down computer and ran outside to meet Adam.

6:00 – Checked email from home and emailed Criminal Justice faculty member back to reassure that I would not cut any journals considered essential by his faculty.

6:15 – Emailed Drupal designer that I’m considering hiring for the redesign. He seems to understand the scope and isn’t trying to up-sell us on stuff we don’t need right now. Draft email to the powers-that-be about getting the go-ahead to start working with him.

6:45 – Went through RSS feeds while watching Hell’s Kitchen in bed with Adam and Reed.

I realize that while there have been little blurbs about this on FriendFeed, Facebook, Flickr, etc., I haven’t actually blogged anything about the new man in my life. Probably has something to do with the fact that the only opportunities to go online have been when I’m nursing him and it’s difficult to write an entire blog post from an iPhone. And since he’s starting to stir in the pouch he’s currently residing in, I doubt I’ll have very long to post today either.

Here are the vital stats:

Reed Javier Farkas, born Friday April 17th at 6:32 am. 6 lbs., 13.9 oz., 19 inches (though by day 6 he was already well over 7 lbs and growing like crazy). I may be biased, but he is definitely the cutest baby I’ve ever seen.

While on days when his gassy-ness and fussiness only allow me 1 hr of sleep I’d probably say that he is my greatest frustration, he is also the greatest joy of my life. I never imagined that I could love anyone so much as I love this beautiful little boy. In spite of still being in a good deal of pain and not sleeping enough, I definitely feel like the luckiest woman in the world to have both Reed and Adam in my life.

This blog will probably not see many updates in the near future, but if you’re interested in what the Farkas family is up to, Adam and I hope to do a good bit more posting on our family blog.

Friday was my very last day at work and I’m now officially on maternity leave. Our little boy is due April 7th, so hopefully I’ll have a few days to relax and catch up on sleep before baby time (sleep has become more difficult in the last few weeks of my pregnancy, but I’ve been pretty lucky, comfortwise, overall). A lot of big things started to take shape at work this week that sort of made me wish the baby could wait a month or so to come on the scene, but I completely trust my colleagues to do the things that need to be done during my absence. It’s certainly a testament to my fantastic colleagues that it was really hard for me to leave work and that I look forward to going back (though part-time for a couple of months) in mid-June.

This past week, I wrote a few posts that I think I’ll have post automatically over the next week (so I may or may not be checking and responding to comments). Other than those, I probably won’t be posting much here for a while and if you email me, please don’t be offended if you don’t hear back from me. I’m sure I’ll also become pretty out-of-touch with what’s going on in the blogosphere over the next few months while I focus on my growing family. I should be at ALA Annual though and look forward to catching up with everything and everyone I’ve missed. I never thought I’d love my career so much that going on maternity leave would evoke bittersweet feelings, and I do feel lucky that my work life and family life are so rich and fantastic. I couldn’t ask for more.

Thanks so much for reading my blog and I hope you’ll stick with it during my hiatus and as I find a balance between my professional life and family life. This blog has been a pleasure to write over the past 4 1/2 years, and I look forward to many more years of being part of this wonderful online community we’ve created through our blogs.