Routine

I only have to get through another eight weeks (and one of those is holiday) before I cease to be a librarian. Strangely enough, when there’s a thin chink of light through the slowly opening door, the frustrations of the job seem all the more irritating!

The Pressure to Get Things Done

For example, I’ve been ploughing through a pile of cello music needing cataloguing, and was feeling at least content that the pile was shrinking – when another big pile appeared uninvited beside me. Did you hear the silent scream?

‘We want to squeeze the most we can out of you’, came the joking comment the other week. (It was a joke, I  hope!)  I feel like a tube of toothpaste. (At least the McAulay is just retiring, to focus on research activities – unlike the empty tube of Macleans, destined for the bin!)

But this afternoon, continuing to catalogue jazz CDs (I’ve done nearly two thousand in recent years) was enough to drive me almost round the bend. It’s so repetitive, like being on a factory production line – there’s absolutely no creativity in it, and very little job satisfaction!  What’s more, peering at the tiny print on the back of the CDs is not easy at the best of times. It’s even worse when my left eye is doing much of the work of the right one whilst it recovers from surgery.  Both eyes end up dry and sore, to add to the tedium of the task itself.  And then, when I glumly reflect on how little CDs get used these days…

To make things a bit better, I’m trying to come up with fun things that I can inject into the routine of my final few weeks.  In recent weeks, I’ve given a NAG (National Acquisitions Group) webinar;  attended the Books and Borrowing Database launch; given the Transformations lecture;  and there will hopefully be a workshop at the end of this month. 

I’m also managing to get to a few lunchtime concerts, to brighten things up a bit more. This week, we’ve had the ‘PLUG’ festival of new student compositions, so on Monday I went to a thoroughly enjoyable concert of music for accordion-plus-one (or two or three) other instruments. Friday, I’ve got a ticket for another concert with a professional ensemble.

I’m racking my brains for other enjoyable activities, but there are limits to what I can come up with!   Any sensible suggestions gratefully accepted …?