confessions of a southside catatonic chataholic

...goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions."
~ William Kingdon Clifford

A long time ago, I used to post here. I used to have opinions and ideas about books, libraries, publishing, technology and fandoms. Then my head crowded out reflection, and I stopped. In August 2013, I handed in my resignation, and now I'm finding bits and pieces of what I used to be (i.e. a kind of Angry Girl With Blog (caps necessary)). She's still here, I'm glad to see. She just won't be blogging about libraries so much these days. So this is fair warning that I'm firing this baby up, again. I have no clue what that will look like, or what it will mean. I'm  job hunting, although officially I don't finish work until 20 December 2013 (I finish just before the holidays, probably so they don't have to pay me stat days), so I imagine some of that will probably inform the next few posts to come. My dream job: Working for ArmageddonExpo and/or a professional goldfish feeder and fanfic reader. Hey, dreams are for free.

I thought, briefly, about what I would look back on this year, and I think maybe it's these:

• I made friends out of colleagues. I also quit my job. The two might be related. (Just not in the way you think)
• broke all of my 'sort of' resolutions: no more early starts, no more late finishes, no more working in the evenings, working less in the weekends, take actual breaks away from my desk. Failed at them all. Badly. I'm not okay about that. Lesson learned? Don't make resolutions
• I lacked purpose, vision, clarity and sanity - maybe I'll try and find them in 2014
• next time around I'd like a job rather than a career (just until my brain is empty of library-related thoughts)
• the date that will stay uppermost in my mind this year is the day I handed in my resignation. I cried great, big, ugly tears in making the decision because stepping outside of comfort zones is always hard. What's that saying? "Life begins outside of your comfort zone." But the feeling of freedom and lightness after was...indescribable. I'm sad beyond belief that I won't be a part of Auckland Libraries' future journeys or, indeed, a wider part of shaping the future of NZ public libraries fullstop. I am both excited and terrified that the next stage from here is unknown
• the biggest achievement of this year will be leaving my job for the right reasons
• the biggest failure of this year is that I stopped reading for pleasure (which, really, should have been a heads up as to my state of mind)
• this year I learned that life is too short to give headspace to people who neither inform you, inspire you, or make you laugh - none of us get out alive in this game called "Life," so a sense of the ridiculous is very much needed.