{"id":3825,"date":"2019-09-11T10:55:55","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T15:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/?p=3825"},"modified":"2019-09-11T12:06:38","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T17:06:38","slug":"thoughts-at-mid-career-part-5-where-to-from-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/2019\/09\/11\/thoughts-at-mid-career-part-5-where-to-from-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts at Mid-Career Part 5: Where to From Here?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the\u00a0fifth in a series of essays. You\u00a0can access the\u00a0rest here<\/a>, though it\u2019s not necessary to read them all or in order.<\/em><\/p>\n

“To me, the only habit worth \u2018designing for\u2019 is the habit of questioning one\u2019s habitual ways of seeing\u201d
\n-Jenny Odell,\u00a0How to do Nothing<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

“We have to fight for this world, but we also have to fight for our ability to experience this world more fully. We have to rediscover how to embrace each day. We have to learn how to embrace the imperfection of the present moment and accept the wide range of experiences that fall between happiness and sadness, success and failure, true love and hatred, popularity and invisibility. But in order to do that, we have to examine and deconstruct the reductive solutions and the magical thinking that we\u2019ve been fed since birth.”
\n-Heather Havrilesky,\u00a0What if This Were Enough<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Since my not-so-near-death<\/em> experience, I\u2019ve been in a really reflective place, doing a lot of thinking about how I want to live and experience the rest of my life and the kind of person I want to be in the world. As you can imagine from what I\u2019ve written, I want to jump off the treadmill of want, reprogram myself from the cult of productivity, and reject the culture of achievement. Here are some of my goals going forward:<\/p>\n

I want to cultivate a sense of gratitude and enoughness. I have a fantastic life surrounded by people I love and work that I usually find fulfilling. I am extremely privileged and I\u2019ve enjoyed a lot of success. I would rather focus on all I have than what I don\u2019t. I doubt I\u2019ll ever be free of want, but I definitely don\u2019t feel the empty, cavernous, hungry sense of want (and lacking) I used to feel.<\/p>\n

I want to find the happy medium between cultivating inner calm and being complacent. Mindfulness can be used as a tool to get people to accept situations or structures that are detrimental to them or downright toxic. It has totally been co-opted by corporate America in order to make workers complacent in the face of toxic structural issues and exploitation (and I wonder if Silicon Valley has embraced mindfulness so they can feel peace in the face of all the bad many of them are doing in the world). I want to be more at-peace with myself and my life, but I don\u2019t want to stand silently by when awful things are going on.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m working to recognize that I\u2019m not an object that needs to be fixed. I cannot be optimized, hacked, or perfected. I am good just as I am. I am loving the exercising I\u2019ve been doing, but I don\u2019t want to be obsessive about it or do it with particular number goals in mind (clothing size, steps, calories, pounds). I do it to feel good. The thing I struggle with accepting most is my social anxiety. I spent an awkward couple of hours trying to make small talk with neighbors I like a great deal at a block party recently and felt totally out-of-place and uncomfortable. I then spent the next several days perseverating over what I should have done and said. I hate that my anxiety makes me not fit in, which only further fuels my anxiety, which makes me want to hide in my house. I don\u2019t know what a happy medium between holing myself up at home and forcing myself to do social things (that, really, I want to do) looks like. This is something I want<\/del> need to work on because it\u2019s paralyzing, but I also don\u2019t want to beat myself up for being who I am. I’m not quite sure how to live that contradiction.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to define myself by my work. I am so much more than a librarian. I want to find a healthy distance from it, while still being passionate about supporting students. Still puzzling out what that looks like. I want to leave work at work (says the woman who had to stay up late the other night to write down an idea that suddenly popped into her head for an activity in Biology 101 before she forgot it).<\/p>\n

I need to remember that people\u2019s screw-ups and emergencies are not my<\/em> emergencies. I want to stop feeling like I have to fix everything. I have a nasty habit of feeling responsible for things that aren\u2019t actually my responsibility and end up doing work that other people were supposed to have done because they dropped the ball and I know it won\u2019t get done otherwise. I need to be ok with those things not getting done (or getting done late) and to let go of the mental energy it takes to keep track of all that stuff. I think being out of leadership roles will help, but I also need to feel like it\u2019s not always my responsibility to bail people out. This pressure to always react quickly and fix things is also a symptom of my anxiety and I\u2019m recognizing how anxiety has shaped many of my maladaptive traits.<\/p>\n

I want to feel like I can be my whole self in each part of my life. I don\u2019t want to feel like I have to shrink and shape shift all the time to make myself palatable to others. And I want to spend more time with the people with whom I feel like I can be totally myself.<\/p>\n

I will own my achievements. I have accomplished a lot, both professionally and personally, and I worked hard for those accomplishments. They\u2019re mine and I want to own them — not always chalk them up to luck. I\u2019m a good writer. I have good ideas. I work damn hard. I\u2019m a team player. I’ve put good things into our profession and my workplaces. I deserve good things.<\/p>\n

I recognize there are ways to resist the attention economy without becoming a hermit. I\u2019ve removed all notifications from my phone and watch other than those that I really want and value and just that has made me feel so much more peaceful in my daily life. Now that I\u2019m back at work after a summer off, I will try to not check Facebook and Twitter when I get home from work. I need to find other ways to help me reclaim my attention. Any suggestions?<\/p>\n

I need to figure out how to use social media productively as well as sparingly. There are people I love with whom I only keep in touch via social media. I do actually learn\u00a0a great deal from social media. I like encouraging and supporting colleagues and friends online. But I don’t know how to live in such a problematic space. I can\u2019t do the numbing mindless scroll. I can\u2019t do the pile on, the hot take, the snarky retort. And I\u2019m just not sure how to be in those spaces in a way that I find fulfilling or that at least doesn\u2019t diminish me.<\/p>\n

I want to focus on consuming online content that is long-form and grounded in a context (rather than the contextless and atomized stream of Twitter\/FB\/Instagram thoughts). Long form essays and blog posts. Podcasts (which I\u2019ve become super-into over the past year). Newsletters. I feel satisfied and informed when I consume this kind of content. I don\u2019t get that from social media.<\/p>\n

I want to find better ways to connect with, share ideas with, and learn from other librarians. I want to have deeper interactions than what you can get in 280 characters. Maybe I need to find other instruction librarians at mid-career who want to meet online periodically in a virtual discussion group. Or library workers who want to explore mindfulness at work and successfully navigating the attention economy. Or some other topic of common interest. Hit me up if you’re interested. I want to have interactions that are more meaningful than what I get out of Twitter. I\u2019d rather have real connection with a few than weak connections with many.<\/p>\n

I want to listen more. As Jenny Odell writes in her book, \u201cthe platforms that we use to communicate with each other do not encourage listening. Instead they reward shouting and oversimple reaction: of having a \u2018take\u2019 after having read a single headline.\u201d I want to slow down and spend more time listening and reflecting than I do speaking and responding. No more knee-jerk reactions and \u201chot takes.\u201d<\/p>\n

At work, I want to be a better follower. I realized recently that I\u2019ve conceived of and led\/managed projects every single year that I have been in this profession. I\u2019m ready for a break from being a leader; I\u2019m exhausted. But I also want to support someone else\u2019s vision. I want to help others be awesome leaders. Being a good follower is as much an art as being a good leader and it is one I want to cultivate. My colleague Allie sometimes calls me \u201ctiny Dean\u201d because I always feel like I have to step up and manage situations or take the lead on things that don\u2019t have leaders. I don\u2019t. I really don\u2019t. I took steps in the Spring to let go of a leadership position I\u2019m currently in and asking my colleagues to support that was a huge deal for me. This coming academic year, I\u2019m going to share that role with another colleague and next year I will have let go of all my leadership positions (including the end of my three-year ACRL-Oregon leadership). I struggle to imagine and can\u2019t wait for the dolce far niente I\u2019m going to experience then. Bring. It. On.<\/p>\n

At work, I also want to focus on the things that are most important to me — my teaching and my relationships with students, faculty, and my library colleagues. Those are rarely the visible achievements that will get you a pat on the back or an award, but they are, without question, the most rewarding aspects of my job. I don\u2019t need to do THE BIG THING that will get me the award\/recognition\/pat-on-the-back to feel like a good librarian.<\/p>\n

I want to be a good ancestor and support others. My ambitions have changed. Like the always wise Mita Williams<\/a> and Kendra Levine<\/a> (my fellow travelers in mid-careerdom), my focus has moved more toward things that support others in the profession. That has always been my focus to some extent, but I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m looking anymore for the pat on the back. And there\u2019s something tremendously freeing about that. I love being a mentor to early-career librarians. I love using my privilege to call attention to other awesome people (especially women and non-binary folks) and to help others get opportunities to shine. I want to continue to use my privilege to support others. Professionally, I\u2019m in a position where I can speak out against injustice or for positive change and have people listen to me. I hate that people are this way — that people judge ideas based on who is sharing them — but knowing I have this privileged place in our profession gives me an opportunity to show up for people.<\/p>\n

In terms of how I use my outside-of-work time, I want to focus more on taking care of myself, spending real quality time alone with my husband, and real quality time with my son. I love being outside. I love exercising. I want to steer clear of things that distract me from all this.<\/p>\n

I want to help my son navigate this messed up society. I already see him struggling under the weight of achievement culture and the cult of productivity and I\u2019m struggling to know how to best help him. He is so like me in so many ways and I want to keep him from feeling like he constantly needs to seek out external validation. I want him to not feel like he needs to compare himself to others all the time or care what people think who, in the end, really mean very little to him. I want him to be ok with quitting when it\u2019s the best thing for him and failing when he tried his best. I want him to have his own wants. I don\u2019t want my son to live this kind of hypercompetitive life<\/a>, but I also know that his school and the values of our community are working against this goal. I also want to remember that my son\u2019s successes are not my achievements<\/a> and acting like they are a measuring stick of my parenting is toxic for both of us. I just want him to be happy and healthy, whatever that happens to look like for him.<\/p>\n

As Jenny Odell wrote in that quote I have at the top of this post, I want to challenge the ways I have of seeing things. I\u2019ve been trying to be more conscious of what is me and what is my programming. But getting off the treadmill of your programming is difficult too. How do you know you\u2019re choosing to do something for the love of it and not because you\u2019re chasing some achievement or approval? I often can\u2019t even really articulate the reasons for saying yes to some of the opportunities I\u2019ve accepted. I just want to be more aware of what is behind my thinking and try to make choices that are mindful of what I really want to be doing. It will require slowing down, something I\u2019ve never been good at.<\/p>\n

I want to learn without an explicit goal. I want to nurture my curiosity and not just spend all my free time learning about things that will explicitly make me better at my job. One of the nicest things about Jenny Odell\u2019s book is how she models a sort of stream of consciousness learning and curiosity. Her book is full of quotes, information, and facts that feel both random and focused. I feel like the explorations I\u2019ve done this summer around the topics I\u2019ve written about here are a great example of how I want to explore in the future. One thing has led to another and another.<\/p>\n

So I guess the moral of this extremely long story is that I still do have a lot of want — I’m just focusing it more now on sustaining and nurturing me than on trying to become something\/someone else. I am enough. I know that deep down. I just need to try and live like I know it. You are enough too. Don\u2019t ever<\/em> forget that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sending love to all of my fellow mid-career librarians. The struggle is real, but so is the privilege we have at this moment. We have so many more possibilities open to us, even if we\u2019re not shiny and new and filled with unending oceans of want (and energy!) any more. In so many ways, that\u2019s actually a good thing. We can chart a new course or recommit ourselves to an existing one.<\/p>\n

For those of you at mid-career, what are you working towards? What sustains you? Excites you? What advice would you have for early-career librarians so they don\u2019t burn out?<\/p>\n

Here are some books and podcasts I\u2019ve read and listened to over the past few months that really got me thinking about these issues (in addition to the many articles I\u2019ve cited in these essays). Maybe you\u2019ll find them helpful too!<\/p>\n

Books<\/strong><\/p>\n

How to do Nothing<\/em><\/a> by Jenny Odell<\/p>\n

Mindful Tech: How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives<\/a><\/em> by David Levy<\/p>\n

Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now<\/em><\/a> by Jaron Lanier<\/p>\n

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion<\/em><\/a> by Jia Tolentino<\/p>\n

What if This Were Enough<\/em><\/a> by Heather Havrilesky (I\u2019ll fully admit that I HATED the deep negativity and cynicism in some of the chapters and then absolutely loved her keen observations in others. Definitely a mixed bag.)<\/p>\n

Double Bind: Women on Ambition<\/em><\/a> by Robin Romm<\/p>\n

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle<\/em><\/a> by Emily and Amelia Nagoski (written for women, sorry guys)<\/p>\n

Podcasts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hurry Slowly\u00a0<\/a>
\n10% Happier<\/a>
\nCall Your Girlfriend<\/a>
\nGoing Through It<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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