Insomniac Librarians Why sleep when there's field literature?

I had the most rewarding day on the job I have ever enjoyed thus far. So that's round about 7 years, which I realise makes me wet behind the ears in Librarian time.

But I don't care.

I know a lot of people that come into contact with me wonder why I choose the hard road in life. I stand and fight against impossible odds or I'll fold meekly in a seemingly unpredictable fashion, and certainly in a manner that would lead a cursory examiner to conclude strange things. A lot of it's cultural.

But really, days like this are why I do what I do.

I'm about to leave the position I'm in now. This is public knowledge at this point in the game. My CV's making the rounds, I'm mulling my course over, scheduling interviews, et cetera. Of course my Board had prior knowledge of this.

It's the time of year my glorious summer Patrons go back to whence they came, which has always been a terribly bittersweet time of year for me.

Let's toss out the bitter, as this is pure sap, and focus only on the sweet.

This is the time of year where I get to enjoy thorough, boundary defying philosophical banter with Patrons.

One of them egged me on to talk about (of all things) C++ and my pathetic attempts at learning the aforementioned.

Next up was ye olde standby. He's thankfully a full year resident with whom I get to discuss dinnseanchas; surely we're the only 2 fools on the planet that truly love such an obscure topic, and he really lowers his bar to engage in conversation with the likes of me. Yer man reads Ordnance Survey after Ordnance Survey. I'm much more anecdotal and folksy in my approach.

This was closely followed by sister in laws, one at a time, who are avid popular fiction readers and truly the sweetest folks around. So I got to inflict my Reader's Advisory skills upon the unsuspecting.

But the best conversation was surely the last. For some time, a youngish widow has frequented my Library. She's as sexist as I, so I'm fairly free to speak around her. She's a sort of closet Indian, as well, so that doesn't hurt. I forced my storytelling on her as we spoke of promises. She was a paralegal, so we swapped Law Office horror stories. And as always, the topic turned to her late beloved.

I cross so many damned boundaries in providing service I feel like a Sherman Tank with a Fence Catcher modification.

But it's the mowing down of the unsuspecting that brings about the sharing of life experiences and the accumulation of emotional wisdom and healing.

It's not about the books - it's the understanding that the books bring about. And I got that today. In spades.