Flashback

Mimi Smartypants is probably my favorite blogger out there, and I get an added kick out of the fact that she lives in Chicago, works as a medical editor, etc., etc. (She's like me, only successful!) Although she writes anonymously, she did an interview with the Sun-Times last year, in which I discovered that she's also from Elgin and attended Knox College (I didn't, but I thought about it). So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I read this:

In the middle of Topics in Calamity Physics, I took a weird break and read books of poetry by two of my favorites, August Kleinzahler and Aaron Anstett.

And yet I almost fell off my chair. Aaron Anstett? People read him? People who know he is? Now I'm dying to know if we all had the same creative writing teacher, or if Aaron's fame is actually extends beyond the walls of our classroom.

This job description will self destruct

In the course of my fruitless job searching, I came across several postings for positions at the CIA. Obviously I'm not looking for a job in Washington, not to mention that I don't speak Arabic or Chinese or any of the non-Western languages that the positions called for, but even if I was or did, I think the disclaimer at the end of the posting would have made me pause:

Important Notice: You are interested in a position as an overt employee---which means you can acknowledge your affiliation with the Central Intelligence Agency. But should you? There may be friends, family, individuals or organizations who would be very interested to learn that you are an applicant for or an employee of the CIA. Their interest, however, may not be benign or in your best interest. You cannot control whom they would tell. We therefore ask you to exercise discretion and good judgment in disclosing your interest in a position with the Agency.

Honestly, the first time I read it, I thought it was a joke. But I guess there are spies everywhere, just looking to prey on unsuspecting librarians. Go figure.

Another reason why I shouldn't be a public librarian

There was an e-mail yesterday saying we could wear Chicago Bears paraphernalia today as a nod to the championship game on Sunday. Could, people. Nowhere did I see the word required. Not to mention that I don't own anything orange. I deleted the e-mail without more than a glance.

This morning at least three people pointed out the lack of team spirit evident by my light blue sweater and gray pants. I received similar comments around Christmas, what with my lack of red/green clothing and decorative pins.

Private joke

As you may have noticed on my handy new list, I'm currently reading a couple of books about writers and writing. I was really excited about American Bloomsbury because it's about Louisa May Alcott and Emerson and Thoreau and Hawthorne and how they all coexisted in Concord in the mid-19th century. But so far, I'm not impressed. It feels like she's trying to make it more of a soap opera than it probably was, and all of the chapters are about three pages long, which I find irritating. I didn't necessarily want heavy literary criticism, but my attention span is longer than three pages per topic.

So I put that one aside momentarily (although I'll finish it, because I can't not--I'm weird like that) when my copy of The Paris Review Interviews (vol. 1) came in. I don't know that I've ever read the Paris Review, although I really enjoyed The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms, which I read last year. But apparently a hallmark of the magazine is their interviews with famous writers on their craft. So far I've read the ones with Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Saul Bellow, and Jorge Luis Borges, and they were all fascinating and made me want to go back and read all the stuff they were talking about, especially the Eliot.

I did pull out my copy of The Waste Land and Other Poems from college and reread "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which I've loved since high school. "The Waste Land" still eludes me completely, but I got such a kick out of the part of the interview where Eliot is talking about his earlier work being more obscure than the later stuff because he was still learning how to use language:

By the time of the Four Quartets, I couldn't have written in the style of The Waste Land. In The Waste Land, I wasn't even bothering whether I understood what I was saying.

This cracked me up in my living room. Then I looked around and M. Defarge and the dog were staring at me and I couldn't explain how funny it was, because neither of them has ever read Eliot, which made me sad. But I'm really enjoying the book.

New(est) leaf

I have a love-hate relationship with New Year's resolutions. Up until last year, I religiously made an extensive list every Jan. 1 (at least 10) and reviewed them very seriously the following Jan. 1 to see how I'd fared. Generally I hadn't made much progress, which made it that much easier to come up with 10 new resolutions.

Last year, working at Evil Job and fed up with everything, I swore off resolutions altogether. That lasted about a week, and then I couldn't resist jotting down a short list on a Post-It note. Because I was in my office at Evil Job at the time, I wrote them in extreme shorthand, which meant that for the next 9 months or so, until I finally threw it out, I carried around in my purse a slip of yellow paper with the following notations: Job. Blog. 50 books. 5K.

Which, of course, translated to: Get a new (library) job. Start a blog. Read 50 books (as per the 50 books challenge making its way around the Internet at the time). Run a 5K.

For those of you keeping score at home, I got two new (part-time, library) jobs, inflicted myself onto the Internet via this forum, read 70 books (such an overachiever!), and bought some really expensive running shoes that I wear to walk the dog.

So this year, once again seeking employment and crabby about it, I swore off the resolutions again. And, predictably, this week I had a minor epiphany that resulted in a sort-of resolution. Thus far there's just one, and at this point there is no Post-It note. But that may come. Did I mention that I have also been known to make resolutions for Lent?

The unwritten resolution is thus: When at work, behave like I want to be there. And yeah, I know it's pathetic that I have to resolve to do this. But there you go. At this time last year, I had been recently referred to by my boss as "hostile." Was she psychotic? Yes. Did she have a point? Absolutely. At the time I justified it because I was changing careers and it didn't matter what they thought of me. Now, even though I'm hoping to move from the public to the academic sector, it does matter. Thus, the new, cheerful Madame Defarge. An oxymoron? We'll see.

I also just finished a self-help book on conducting an effective job search (which involves a lot of steps with names that are capitalized), so as painful as it will no doubt be, the new, cheerful Madame Defarge will also attempt to network, despite not believing that word should be used as a verb. So if you know anyone who works in an academic library (particularly if they are a Decision Maker [note capitalization]), please advise. God help us all.