Sunday, January 30, 2005
 

And She's Back

Over a month since I last blogged; that must be my longest hiatus ever.

I'm lethargic, unmotivated, and suddenly without an identity.

It has not been a good stretch.

First and foremost: I've taken a medical leave of absence for this semester of grad school. That was possibly the hardest decision I've ever made, including deciding to go to grad school in the first place. I feel defeated and as if I've already dropped out. My identity has been primarily academic for most of my life, and now, for the first time since, I suppose, 3-year-old preschool, I'm not in school. My identity is now a giant, sucking black hole.

I feel like I should be making the Big, Life-Course-Setting Decisions during this leave, but I mostly sleep and read junk. I'm really not capable of much else, given that I've turned into some sort of particularly inert slug.

I've been fortunate in several ways, a major one being that my old library job more or less fell into my lap. The pdocs felt (understandably) that I should get a job or something to get me out of the house. The thought of doing this made me feel like several tons of sand had been dropped on top of me, even though I know that their advice is sound. So I wasn't doing much about job-hunting, except occasionally flipping through the classifieds and getting yet more depressed.

I headed to the library one day to pick up the latest installment of a particular mystery series. Standing in the foyer (the quite large entranceway before you enter the main library) was the director-- that is, my boss. She asked what I was doing here at this time of year (that would be living a lie and not telling the general public that this is a medical leave), and I said that I wasn't taking coursework and was staying at home to "keep up with my reading and work on papers" (hah). She jokingly asked if I wanted a job. I nearly dropped right there and said yes. She said she'd see what she could do, because they'd like to have me back.

So I go back to the city of university for a week to tie up loose ends, meet with people, and enter the English building exactly once (panic attack central). I come back, and the first Monday I'm here, the director calls and offers me part-time. I seize it. It's not at all a heavy workload, but it's enough to get me out of bed and showered, which is more than I generally do. And it throws me back into the public arena, gives me something to do, something to keep my mind occupied, all of that.

Thankfully, the computer system and such came back to me easily, and I think I'm up to date on all the new policies and procedures. Not so thankfully, the liberry is the usual tempest in a teapot, except the tempest has gotten much bigger, and the teapot still pretty durn small. I'm keeping a low profile but fear having to take sides.

So, that's where I am now. I now pledge to update more faithfully and return to the small measure of sanity that is blogging.

Peace out.

Elvisette philosophized at 5:48 PM