Tuesday 24 February 2015

Why I took a break from the blog

Hi, folks.

Just a heads up: this post is going to have very, very little content related to the farm.

So, as you likely noticed, we've been fairly silent since October. This wasn't a planned absence - I came home from a knife-sharpening workshop in early November and hand-wrote a blog post with the intention of posting it - but the stars kind of aligned and kept me away from this space. I wasn't checking other blogs, either. I missed reading posts from my friends (as I count most blogs I follow to be friends, especially Buttons and Tessa) and I missed updating you all on what was happening in our life. As such, I'm making a conscious effort to reconnect with you, and make our lives available to you as well.

As you may know, both Jordan and I work full time. Jordan is extra busy right now, studying and writing tests to advance his career goals, and I am busy with work as well.  I'm a library technician at a small academic university, and I manage all of our online resources. This includes ensuring our users, both students and faculty, can access online books and journals, article indexes, and specialized resources (including 3D anatomy modelling!) that the university spends a lot of money on. I turn it on and make sure we are providing proper access points; I troubleshoot when users, or myself, can't get access to what is needed; I turn resources off at the end of our access period; I do some work with off-campus authentication so users can access the resources from work, home, or wherever their research (or vacations) take them; and I provide support to our Collections and Acquisitions librarian so she has the information she needs to make decisions regarding our e-resources. In addition, I provide 4 hours of reference a week - answering research, citation, and access questions. Right now, I'm slotted to contribute all my reference hours on chat reference with users from post-secondary institutions across BC and the Yukon (as opposed to face-to-face reference with our users).

As you can imagine, this means that I have 35 hours a week staring at a computer. I really enjoy my job, and I love my career path, for so many reasons - but all of the computer work I do to get paid means I'm not super enthusiastic to come home and spend more time with the computer.  I spent a good portion of December and January battling headaches at work, and it turned out my glasses prescription needed to be updated. But this meant that looking at the screen hurt like heck for a few weeks, and I was forcing myself to look away at least once an hour to get make it through the day.

I've also been busy with Zim. We've been at school two nights a week since August. It's been going great (more on that in an upcoming post), but as I'm struggling to avoid burnout, I will be taking a break from class for a bit. I plan to make some of the equipment (with Jordan's help) so we can keep practicing at home, but I'm also looking forward to taking a break from all extracurricular activities (except my work with the union at work - I am in a position with a two-year term, which ends next January) and try to regain my balance and sanity.

If we had the snow load that we had last year, I would have lost my mind this winter. I'm not exaggerating - last year's snow was so hard on us and it was a struggle to keep up. We also bought a small SUV for me, which has decreased my winter stress (look for a post about that soon too).

Anyway, I'm currently attending a conference related to my job: Electronic Resources and Libraries, or ER&L.  The conference is in Texas, but they offer online attendance as well, which is about 10% of the total cost to attend in person. But the conference is on Texas time, so it starts at 6:45 am local time, and we live out in the sticks without "real" internet, so I am attending from Kim's house in town. I brought Zim in with me yesterday, and he'll join me tomorrow too (as it's his last class tomorrow), but today it was just me with Doodle and Pongo. And Pongo likes to sing. So I will leave you, for today, with a quick video of my favourite shelties singing the song of their people during a break between conference sessions.

And, rest assured: I am making an effort to be present on the blog. I'll be back soon with more news from the last few months.

3 comments:

  1. Wow you busy, busy girl. I have missed you and guess what? I get new glasses on Friday;)The computer is hard on the eyes. Sounds like Jordan is doing very well that is wonderful and I am impressed with the Job you do. In am glad to know you are doing OK and blog when you can but it is not supposed to be a chore:) It is to be enjoyable . sending hugs and have fun at dog school and the conference. Hugs B

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  2. I am back on I love the singing dogs. Love love them. Hugs B

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  3. glad to see you blogging again! Was wondering what might be up.... I keep an eye on your blog for all the interesting farm stuff :) I'm in Kamloops now, most likely permanently .... take care! kw

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