So Abbie has her new baby as an excuse for stepping away from blogging for a little while. A very good reason, indeed. My excuse is that I was writing a thesis/dissertation and transitioning between places. Those excuses are less-good than a baby, but they were compelling to me. Writing deadlines and moving are two things I find particularly demanding of my energy and my time. Now I’ve finished my big paper, and I’m comfortable in our current place. So I figure now I have the emotional and temporal resources to re-engage with blog posting. (It might take me a minute to shake off my academic prose style. Please pardon my syntax and vocabulary in the meantime.) In other words, I’m back.
And I’m here to tell you about where I’ve been burrowing away for most of the last six weeks: The Library. Don’t worry. I don’t actually have that much to say.
The more “experienced” (older) I’ve become, the more I really like working at a desk. Not a cleared off kitchen table, but a proper working desk. Of course, it’s totally okay to work at a table or on my lap for a few days, but I just find that I am much more productive when I am at a desk. That means that working from home is often not my preference, especially if my residence du jour does not have a desk. And where can you go when you need a desk, but you don’t have an office? The library! I love libraries. For their desks and carrels. For their concentrated atmosphere. For their inspiration – on many occasions during the dissertation writing, I thought, ‘If all these other people could finish their book/manuscript/article, then surely I can, too’. I have to say, though, that one of my all time favorite things about libraries is being surrounded by beautiful books. I write well with this kind of scenery.
Sometimes I think that I would have liked to study library science. But also, sometimes I think I would have liked to go to massage therapy school. In actuality, I think I really just like being in libraries and getting massages. If anything, writing my dissertation made me more committed to my field. There are so many ways to use social science to improve the situation of vulnerable families, and I love being a part of that.
