A few times recently - 3 times in the last 2 days?! - I've written something in a blog or by email that's either been taken with the wrong intent or has turned into something much bigger than how it started. I know this process isn't unique to me, but it's still making me uncomfortable. I'm going to try (as always) to fix it by explaining, even as I can hear the echo of my conscience whispering, "Let it go." That's not in my make-up.
This whole mess (or at least what I think of as being a mess) started with my job. Until January, I was the part-time (28-32 hours/week) Head of Technical Services, supervising two staff members who worked 20 and 30 hours weekly. One left in January for what I can only assume are personal reasons. I found out that she was leaving by email while I was on vacation, through a confusing web of communications with several people. The last week that she was going to work (after I'd returned), she didn't come in four of the five days that she'd been scheduled due to bad weather and/or illness, and on the one day that she did work, she left several hours early. The result of all that was that I began the year feeling like I couldn't catch up and had very little idea what she actually did. She had made it clear, though, before she left, that she never had 30 actual hours of work to do, so the new hire shouldn't be expected to work that much. Since we'd never adjusted her position after the library automated, that was a reasonable assessment.
So I decided, with the support of the library director, to wait for a couple of weeks before posting the position, to determine more closely what our actual needs were for that area. I split the work with the other staff member, and received additional help from some members of the circulation department as they could afford to give it.
After a few weeks and lots of consideration, I met with the director and determined a pay-rate and number of hours, based on the expectations that could be met by a theoretical candidate for the job. Frankly, there are a number of ways that the job could be filled, and if someone were hired who could do the minimum but very well, they would be paid accordingly and no more. That's not unreasonable. But if we found the perfect combination of experience, creativity and motivation, then the pay-rate and number of hours would increase quite a bit.
The job was suggested to someone who I'd had in mind all along, but that person was not interested at that time.
We posted the job internally. Two people applied, were interviewed, and were not right for the position. After a great deal of consideration, I chose to take on the additional duties myself rather than posting the job externally. I'll begin working full-time on March 22. Until then I'm scrambling to do the primary job I was hired to do (cataloging), plus the job I've since taken on that is really my first love (selection and acquisitions), plus all the myriad extra duties that have been piled on in the intervening years. Plus all of the processing, since the other cataloger has basically decided that if she doesn't get a raise, she's not going to do it. I'll not get into that now; our relationship is a constant challenge that will never be resolved.
However, the person that I originally wanted in Processing - who would be perfect for it and for all of the other collateral responsibilities that were optional - is free now to take a position if one becomes available. So I just wish that I could go back in time and give the job to her, and keep my own regular 28-32 (well, it's closer to 32, really), and not have to change my life so much.
But there's no going back, right? So I'm periodically freaking out, trying desperately to get through my piles of paperwork, boxes of books, mountains of donations, in-boxes teeming with email screaming for replies, and always in the back of my mind, the thought, "This Is The Rest Of Your Life." I didn't sign on for this, you know? I wasn't going to do this or be this. I always said that if I wanted to die of a heart attack by age 35, I'd have been an attorney - at least the money would be better. And who do I have to blame for being here and doing this? No one but me. So boo fucking hoo, really. I knew it would happen.
That's why, when J.R. pensively asked this week - probably rhetorically - "How many hours per week is too many hours per week to be working? And what is 'enough'? How about 'satisfied', 'accomplished', 'done', or 'productive'?", I opened her Comments box immediately and chimed in. Well, I was limited to 1000 characters and on my first try I think I probably exceeded that by 3 times. Who better to give advice than someone who's desperately in need of it? So I spouted off exactly what I need to hear, or not, and when I read her blog the next day, I was stunned - literally - to see how negatively my comments had been taken. "All I'd said was..." that she should work a little extra now so that she feels more caught up, and then she should go back to her normal routine. 'Cause that's pretty much what I'm going to have to do, soon. But judging by the comments that other people left, I'm not only a fool, I'm also proposing that she ruin her life in pursuit of an unattainable goal: work satisfaction. So I (much as I'm doing now) hopped back into the fray to say, "Well, I was just looking at it from my own point of view, which happens to also be, very basically, the same sort of atmosphere in which she (J.R.) works." Not sure that went over any better. It probably came off sounding all holier than thou (which it does now) because "none of you can understand - you're not living La Vida Librarian!" Ah, I'm such an idiot.
Naturally, I was led to think about why I'd given in to those urges to use someone else's blog as my forum for (attempted) disputing my internal demons. And it came to me that it has something to do with my concept of "self" and "personhood" and feeling and being "different". And, naturally, when I'm in for a penny, I'm in for a pound, what better way to get that out than to blog it? Last night, I tried to explain it, and did so badly, through my understanding of my own -ism or lack of same.
Yeah, that's what I meant - my own lack of feminism. The part of me that feels weird or deficient when I'm in conversation with other strong women because they go about things so differently than the way that I do, or they seem to understand things so much differently than I do. It's like I'm missing some key element that makes it all makes sense. I'd so much rather play pool than make a scrapbook, you know? But that doesn't meant that I'm claiming any particular lack of femininity - 'cause I'd love to have nice fingernails and there are few pleasures on earth like having one's hair washed (I mean, really, if most men knew what it's really like to have a shampoo and condition in a nice salon, it would be against the law). My lingerie drawer is so full that it's actually two drawers, and I used to buy lots of "product" (a la Kyan) until Lori taught me the error of my ways (I can spend more on what I want, rather than getting tons of different things and not using half of them). But I don't know Harriet Tubman from Clara Barton, and I don't know suffrage from a hole in the ground. Perhaps I "should" - fuck, I know I "should" - but if I can't be troubled to remember how many miles it is from the library to NILS for travel expense reports (I always have to look it up), there's no room in my head for stuff I "should" know.
And it seemed, and seems, important to explain this to the people who might be reading the things that I write and wondering where my head is when I'm writing. Particularly because I seem to have an all-female audience, at least as far as those who undertake to comment are concerned. (I know that you're reading, Californian, even if you don't say anything.) Anyway, if I'm writing like a jackass, I wanted you to know that it's because this is me, this is how I think, and it's not because I think this is how anyone else should think. Ugh; I'm starting to get philosophically muddy and should probably just stop before I make it any worse. I'll just say one more thing. My intention wasn't to set the cause of feminism (or any other -ism) back 20 years. It was only to clarify my own perspective of firmly-held confusion.
Ach. This is all too serious. Next post will be my typical oddity - I promise.
No comments:
Post a Comment