Six months or a year at this little branch to recover from seven years in the wild, raging west. Here for a good time, not for a long time.

fall down seven times, stand up eight

Yes, I’m starting this blog post by quoting myself. I also find me annoying, don’t worry. However, I think it’s important to point out that I’m a prophet. Here I am, just shy of a year into my posting at the small branch and I’m about to transfer away. A rebound branch, designed to heal me after a bad break up with a abusive branch. Like crashing on your friend’s couch while you figure out how to get back onto your feet.

I’ve actually spent a lot of the last year or so, figuring out how to make my life a more manageable. Scaling back, paring down. Over the winter holidays, my body did that thing that it does when it forces me to slow down. I had some back pain which inflamed and pressed against my sciatic nerve and if you’ve ever experience sciatic nerve pain, I know you understand that it was the most aggressively horrible feeling.

I did a round of steroids and I finally start physical therapy this week, but I realized I’d been living my life in anticipation of something that I was treating as if it was far away, but in fact is already here. I knew, even in my early twenties, that I would get to a point where I would have to do less.

I think it’s time to stop pretending that I’m not already there. Inflammatory arthritis damages your joints over time and the fact that its in my spine now means I have to think seriously about slowing down enough to prevent more damage.

So I took stock of what I had going, what was hurting me, and what I could set down. Here are some things that are hard for me now that didn’t use to be: Opening things. Holding things. Fastening things. Tying things. Anything where I have to twist my torso. Anything where I have to lean down. Anything where I have to reach.

You know, existence.

The main two things that I needed to change was a longer commute because sitting in the car for more than twenty minutes or so can be painful. The other thing, was storytime. I’ve been a children’s librarian for the last ten years and I love being a children’s librarian but storytime now physically hurts to do. It hurts, certainly, to set up and break down but the singing, the stomping, the clapping, the shouting, just all of it makes me feel wrung out. So to that end, I took a transfer to the dark side.

Adult services.

It will be okay. If nothing else, it will make me a more well-rounded librarian. My new branch is five miles from home in a building that has been open for less than a year and filled with good people, including a couple of previous co-workers who also escaped the branch that tried to kill us. I am excited to get back to a big, bustling library, especially one that’s close to home.

Overall good changes.

And hey, maybe less commute = more writing??