Thoughts on the Journey

One reason I decided that I never wanted to work back to back closing shifts was because of how it completely messed up my sleep schedule the first summer I did it. Due to doing some trading to get to interviews, I had to do it this week, Wednesday and Thursday nights I didn't get home until about 12:25 and sleep came far later. Last night it was even worse than usual, I think I might have slept by about 5 am and then I woke up at 8 am, I even got out of bed and was picking out my clothes before I really looked at the clock. Then I was able to sleep a little more until a little after 10 am, the school in Ohio called to say they went with someone else, but they did tell me I was very gracious. I'm oddly impressed with myself as I wasn't that awake when I spoke to them, but I've always been good on the phone. Then I managed a little more sleep but I spent the night grinding my teeth and so woke up with my jaw feeling sore, not terribly rested and grumpy.

yakalskovich, this is why I wasn't that happy to be greeted with random RP squeeing when I was pinged.

The weather has also set in for summer and is hot and gross, but I had Thai iced tea with lunch and am reading an amazing book by Lindsey Davis about Vespasian. Tonight after work I'm going to call my very best friend and then I have a long weekend.

Life is feeling long at the moment, but things have been accomplished this week. I haven't missed a shift, I wrote a librarian blog post: Where I fit as a librarian: not either/or but and. I'm quite proud of it as a lot of those thoughts have been sloshing around in my head since I started doing these interviews and it felt nice to write them.

I have a wonderful new iPhone that I'm enjoying and I'm going to actually start spending my tax refund. It's this weird thing where I'm used to watching every penny so I'm careful about a book here, a movie here, groceries bills that when I have a good chunk, I sort of want to hold it. Which to me feels silly, so my plan is upgrade LibraryThing-add in all my books, get myself a proper massage, wander around Barnes and Noble and Dawn Treader and buy books, buy apps and books for my iPhone and remind myself that I will find a job. I'm also trying to get up the nerve to go bug the bank again, I was going to do that today before work, but honestly don't have the energy.

Now I'm going to go play around in wonderful FridayFic prompts and fantastic tags and feel better.

I think I've definitely hit that middle of semester oh god why am I doing this feeling? These past two assignments for my children's literature class that I wanted to look forward to have instead had me all but crying because I'm doing stuff that's just okay. Also there are all these people that I want to get in contact with to make connections and other things to do but finding energy is hard. I feel like I'm scattered all over the place though I know this is what I want to be doing.

I got my grade on my illustrator presentation and its a C-B kind of range which fits how I felt about it when I did it, its just hard. Part of why that was so hard is that I did find the stuff I learned interesting but we had a completely specific format of power point to work in which made me feel trapped. I don't like power point, that's really not a secret and I get that she was trying to make us feel comfortable by saying this is exactly what you have to do. Just in the end, its something I"m not good at. I like presenting and talking but I'm much more of a storyteller than anything else.

Then for the booktalk, I've been writing this in my head since last week when I thought it was due but just recorded it last night. Though as most of crackchat knows, technology and I didn't get along. So I skipped by 1 pm class and finally got something recorded and done. Its not fancy, its just me talking but its there.

I'm going to do better on my paper for her since I do really enjoy the class and she likes my LibraryThing stuff, I just hate this feeling of god, can't I even do well in the class I like. I need to figure out something to do tonight and over the next few days that will make me happy and remind me that I can do this. I don't know what that will be yet? Any thoughts or suggestions from others who have survived graduate school or just slumps?

I've mentioned that I'm taking this amazing children's literature course, as part of this course, I have to create a LibraryThing account. At the moment this account is going to contain my reviews of children's media and I'm going to link it since I just read two books and reviewed them and I know bookelfe wanted to read mine. Here is my account, I'll probably create another collection to follow my own personal reading but here you'll find my class reviews.

I'm also feeling quite accomplished because I changed the burnt out lightbulb in my room and replaced it with a halogen one since I think that will last longer. Oh and I successfully bought the tickets for the Punch Brothers which makes me so happy. Another lovely thing is that I adore, adore all the used bookstores in Ann Arbor. I just picked up a hard cover edition of The Pride of Baghdad for 7.50 and will be reading it for my children's course too. The weather's starting to turn grey and so today I splurged on a really lovely brunch at this awesome place called Cafe Zola, they do tea in a French Press which was just so good. I might end up buying one of those since it seems a really clever way to enjoy loose tea.

I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for young adult or children's books that you think I should read for this class. It can really be from any age since while I could probably do mainly young adult, I also want to read some meant for younger kids. If you have kids or nieces and nephews, what are the books that they're currently going crazy over?