It is my birthday today! Not my real birthday, but my official Saint's Day: it was a year ago today that I adopted the moniker @SaintEvelin, and began to embrace and become part of the online library community that had daunted me until that point. So it is that I have been attempting to succent without sneers for a whole twelve months, and in this 43rd blog post I shall gaze at my belly-button to see if the fluff therein has corresponded to the aims I set out in my first post, or whether, like Charles Foster Kane, I have diverged from my declared principles.
"This blog...will
document my attempts to find my place in, and embrace firmly, the
library community..."
Of the 42 posts prior to this one, 33 (79%) have been about libraries and/or my personal or professional development. This figure includes 16 posts devoted to the CPD23 project. Beyond this core, five posts have been about language or literature, and four posts have been concerned with that other great love of my life: fashion. I think this is a reasonable division. If one removes the crutch of CPD23, 65% (17) of my posts have been 'on-topic'.
"The title of this blog: "Succentorship
without Sneers", describes (with pithiness and alliteration) my desire
to balance a passion for libraries with an inherent suspicion of almost
everything. This is not to say that an empirically minded doubt of all
is a bad thing; it is demonstrably not. But I am a pessimistic soul at
times and all too often place barriers that are unwarranted. This
bloody-mindedness must stop. Thankfully I am an optimist at times too.
This isn't a question of faith or doubt, but of genuine openness: of
listening and considering things without taint of preconception. It's
also about showing a bit of enthusiasm and not being such a miserable
git: beyond any question of science or discrimination, there is a simple
matter of attitude: I have to go out and get stuck in, rather than stay
sitting here on my beautiful arse, waiting for the world to come
knocking for my services."
Here's
the nub of the blog. It's not just meant to be me sat here typing my
thoughts about libraries. It's supposed to be me getting out and
engaging with the profession; expanding my horizons and embracing new
developments. I don't suppose it's helped that I've still not got myself
a professional post: it doesn't encourage an awful lot of optimism and
it leaves me with only so many new and exciting frontiers to explore. No
surprise then that this blog has descended into the odd didactic rant now and again (I am
still, it seems, "a cynical bitch"). But I've had three Library Camps to help inspire
me along the way, and to have had a blog post referenced in print has been a particular honour: a real validation that I must be doing something right here. Above all, my new-found library friends both in the flesh
and on Twitter have been invaluable in keeping me perky and engaged
during the discouraging tedium of job-hunting. It really means a lot.
"I
shall attempt to be honest both to myself and to my readership, whilst
maintaining a reasonable modicum of diplomacy."
I do think I've broadly succeeded in this regard, though I think I need to do more reflection. I'm a timid creature, and I'm always a bit scared about how my attitudes and opinions are received by my peers (all too often I've snuck my posts out when nobody's looking). I need to be braver and I also need to be more honest and open. That said, it's hard to be fully open without breaking into distracting exhibitionism; there's always an element of fear in expressing oneself, and I suspect that there's a happy medium to be achieved somewhere between retention and extroversion. Locating this medium is something I find a considerable struggle in reality let alone online. I'm always concerned, for instance, that people find it irritating, weird or disturbing when I tweet about pretty clothes, just as I'm concerned that people find it irritating, weird or disturbing when I wear them. So it is that I try to limit my tweets on such topics and avoid allowing my every blog post to descend into some hand-wringing whinge about the social tribulations of a genderqueer librarian. As much as this aspect of my identity might impact upon my personality and my interaction with the world (and it is, for me, a genuinely big issue with which I'm constantly wrestling as I take these first steps in my career as a librarian), I endeavour to treat it as something unworthy of special attention or remark: to normalize it rather than to have this blog become dominated by that theme. I don't really want to find myself pigeon-holed in such a way. Perhaps this is the wrong approach to take. Perhaps it's unhelpful, or maybe even fundamentally dishonest. That's a big worry I have: that I mislead through omission and give an offensively false impression to my audience. I don't know. It seems a difficult balance to strike. I welcome any thoughts you might have on the matter (and on anything else I've had to say today).
Aims, then, for my second year? Be less timid, but not too ranty. Keep sharing my experiences and what I've learnt. Hopefully I'll be in a new job soon, and then I shall have a world of new learning to exploit, but there's still much I can write about even now (I'm currently working on some hopefully helpful tips for Excel, in response to a suggestion on Twitter). I feel I've come a fair way in the last twelve months: no longer am I a terrified and daunted newbie. I'm increasingly engaged with Twitter, and thanks to the Library Camps I'm starting to get to know people in real life too. It amuses me a little to think that just over a year ago I approached my first library conference with real dread, while now (thanks to the near-damascean conversion I had there, and the warmth and encouragement of the library community I've entered) I'm filled with excited anticipation for the CDG event in Birmingham next month. If you're going, I look forward to seeing you there, and whether you're going or not, I'd just like to take this opportunity to say:
...thanks for reading. x
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