This blog is stagnating. When I started it, I wrote about so many things—mostly about libraries and the issues we face, but also about… whatever I felt like. I always had dozens of little notes all over the place with ideas for new posts to write.
At this moment, I only have two new posts in the works. And the frequency of my posting has trended consistently downwards since I began this blog.
It’s not that I’m any less passionate about libraries than I was when I started it. It’s not that I’m any less committed to figuring out all the myriad things we need to figure out. It’s certainly not a lack of ideas or opinions!
It’s just that I’m tired of writing about these things. I feel like I’m writing and not doing.
I started this blog because I want to have a voice in the ongoing professional conversation about libraries. I’m beginning to realize that for me, a blog isn’t the best way to accomplish that goal.
I’m tired of writing about the ideas I have, writing about the things I want to do.
I want to just do them.
I want to make a difference, to do visionary work. I want to be in the thick of things, forging our path into the future. I want to work my way into a position of leadership.
But I’m frustrated because I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to position myself where I want to be professionally. I’m not talking about my actual job with the Kansas City Public Library—I love my job here!—it’s more that I don’t know how to jump into the larger professional milieu of networking and conferences and conversations and arguments. I’m a naif when it comes to the politics of our industry.
That’s what I really wish they’d teach in grad school: networking and professional politics. How to find mentors and guides, not just for the specific kind of work you want to do, but to teach you the ropes of the larger professional world in which your work is embedded.
For now, I’d rather be doing the work than talking about it. And I feel like this blog is just a bunch of talking. It’s not actual doing.
Maybe someday it will be my voice in active professional conversation and debate. Maybe someday it will be an essential part of doing the work I want to do.
But right now it’s not. Right now, it’s just me babbling. And I’m tired of that.
I think, for now, it would be better for me to stop talking and spend my time listening as actively and passionately as I can.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with this blog in the coming year. I may abandon it completely, or I may force myself to post more regularly. I may continue to randomly pop on and babble as the mood takes me.
Next year, though, I need to focus on figuring out how to get myself actively involved in the larger world of librarianship. I need to find my way into the professional community at large. I need to in order to forge my path to serve my community the way I really want to.
So, we’ll see how that goes. I may or may not talk about it here.
John the Librarian 