Work-life balance – Information Wants To Be Free

Whitewater rapids in the middle of a forest

When I surrendered to the current

One author whose newsletter I read avidly is Dr. Zed Zha. In Ask the Patient, she writes about holding on to humanity and humility as a health care provider and…

Photo of a creepy tree-lined path that leads into darkness

Disability slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

The double life of being chronically ill at work, slow librarianship, and checking in as an expression of care

Developing a long-term illness, whether chronic or acute, is like being dropped into a country completely unfamiliar to you. You don’t know the language, the customs, the cuisine, the people.…

Painting of a dark-haired woman in a big 19th century dress reclined on a sofa

Disability slow librarianship Work-life balance

Rest as a productive act

I’m a member of an online support group for the autoimmune condition I have and one of the recently diagnosed people wrote a post about how hard it is to…

Serene brown rabbit resting in the grass

Disability management slow librarianship Time Work Work-life balance

Toxic comparison, time poverty, and a manager’s duty of care

I haven’t written anything in a while because it’s been a really hard few months. My health has taken a turn for the worse with a new condition – also…

Tiny mushrooms covering a tree stump in the forest surrounded by Fall leaves

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Community Time and Enoughness: The heart of slow librarianship

Photo credit: Mushrooms surrounded by trees by Valentin S. This is the sixth and final essay in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list…

Painting of three workers harvesting wheat and others lying or sitting down and eating

slow librarianship Time Work Work-life balance

Queer Time, Crip Time, and Subverting Temporal Norms

Photo credit: The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder This is the fifth in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list of all of…

Dolce Far Niente painting, woman in a dress lying outside on a bed of animal skins

management slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

Meredith’s Slow Productivity (not to be mistaken for Cal Newport’s Faux Slow Productivity)

Image credit: Dolce Far Niente by John William Godward This is the fifth in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list of all of…

Impressionist painting of four people in flowing clothes resting on the bank of a river

librarianship management slow librarianship Time Work Work-life balance

Slow productivity is a team sport: A critique of Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity

Image credit: Dolce far Niente by John Singer Sargent This is the fourth in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list of all of…

Two men in suits record the actions of women doing sewing work in a factory

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The Productivity Trap

Photo source This is the third in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list of all of them on the first essay. In my…

Old photo of two women in a field gathering wheat

slow librarianship Time Work Work-life balance

With Work Time at the Center

This is the second in a series of essays I've written on time. You can view a list of all of them on the first essay. Once upon a time,…

slow librarianship Time Work-life balance

Time: It doesn’t have to be this way

“What we think time is, how we think it is shaped, affects how we are able to move through it.” -Jenny Odell Saving Time, p. 270 This is the first…

White flowers hanging loosely off their stems

about me career slow librarianship Work-life balance

Slowness, disability, and the art of losing

A few weeks ago, I had what honestly felt like a perfect day. It was a bright sunny day in December that felt almost stolen from the jaws of our…

librarianship slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

Slow librarianship and prioritizing life over work

I recently wrote an essay for CHOICE's LibTech Insights blog entitled "Building a Better Library Tech Future with Slow Librarianship." It provides a brief introduction to slow librarianship, how it…

Clouds and sun in the background with a phone in the foreground that says God Calls.

librarianship slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

Vocational awe is always harmful

A friend of mine wrote a tweet that really made me think the other day: I understand arguments against a default "vocational awe," but much of the discourse denies the…

Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey book cover

community college libraries instruction librarianship mid-career slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

Stop normalizing overwork

In the years that I have been trying my best to avoid overwork, I've become more attuned to the signs that I am indeed overworking. I usually notice one of…

librarianship libraries management slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

Universal design for work?

I've had migraines for over 20 years. I didn't seek workplace accommodations for them until this year. The biggest barrier to getting accommodations at work was my own internalized ableism,…

librarianship management slow librarianship Work Work-life balance

When to say yes (or no)

Workaholism is a hard addiction to recover from. It's not like some addictions where you can avoid the places or substances that played a role. Most of us are not…

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What is slow librarianship?

Last week, there was a lot of chatter about slow librarianship on social media. People were looking for writing on the subject and I realized that my work is scattered…

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Slow life, slow librarianship

It's been a quiet summer over here, focused on family, recovering from the stress of the academic year, and doing a lot of reading. I'd had fantasies of getting a…

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Drop the ball

When I visited my parents in December of 2019, they asked me to go through a box of old stuff they wanted to get rid of. My mother had kept…