Mixtress Video: What Should I Read Next?

I did a YouTube thing. It's "ASMR Adjacent" or "ASMR lite". Watch it if ya wanna.

//grumblegrumblegroo//

Sometimes I think that I don't like people enough to work for the public.*

Here's the thing: the kind of people I have a problem with are those that think you WANT to pay attention to them. People who walk in a room like they own it and like you give a shit what THEIR top three artists in the room are. "Write it down!" No thanks, random dude.

People that think your time is theirs are my biggest pet peeve. Guess who cares about your movie reviews? Your family and friends. Guess who doesn't care about your movie reviews? People in customer service. Sometimes cool conversations about art and life and all that other stuff evolve organically, and those can be the greatest conversations when they involve two consenting adults. But walking up to a person that is paid to be nice to you and taking advantage of that niceness with monologues is just. so. sleazy. Don't do it.

This random and probably in poor taste rant has been brought to you by...

hormones!!!

Gee, I love my endocrine system.

*Other times I'm sooo happy I can help someone get through their day, so it's not all bad.

a predictable entry...

I feel like anyone that knows me knows this type of thought process was coming...

My mom and I were talking about me and school. (I started library school this week.) She asked me if there was anything in my life that I am lacking. And the honest answer is that besides money and hopes for retirement, NOTHING.

I have a home, a family, and friends. I am healthy and I know how to get by on very little money. When I pay off my car in less than a year, I'll be $300/mo richer.

The only thing to gain as a librarian is a hope to retire someday. But is time off in the last couple of decades in my life worth giving up half my time now until the age of 65 or 70? I really don't think so. I suppose I'd also gain respect from a lot of people. It sounds WAY cooler to say you're a librarian than to have to correct people when they accidentally call me one now just because I work in a library. But that respect is ultimately just me worrying about what people think of me, and that's never held much weight with me anyway.

I've never been an ambitious person. I'm quite content with sitting in my own little corner thinking about nothing. I don't get bored. My goals in life include having a happy and healthy family and my own comfortable home. I have these things now, and those extraordinary things in themselves I know make me incredibly lucky. And those are the most important things. To be a librarian, I might be sacrificing a bit of my health. For a person like me, working full time would be a big strain on my mental health at the very least. Having a desk job (sitting still all day) I KNOW would have a big strain on my physical self. Being higher up on totem poles professionally is an isolating thing, by nature. I've never wanted to be in charge of things.

I'm very proud of my peers (Cari, Jeana, Jill, Mark) that have gotten their degrees in library science and gone on to be directors of libraries. That is so cool and they are good at their jobs. They are good at these jobs because they have big ideas and are incredibly smart and outgoing and rad. I love them for it.

I have to be honest with myself about my own abilities, though. I just chose to go back to a job in circulation because it was LESS responsibility. I'm not well-suited to big ideas and outgoingness. There are a lot of really rad people in the world that don't do what society would consider as "important" jobs. I've NEVER cared what kind of job a friend has as long as they're happy. I've seen more unhappy people in jobs of prestige than in jobs of lower status and perceived "drudgery".

I've given up on a lot of things in my life. I'm really quite good at making excuses and I'm on the path to making them about school right now. It's hard to say if I would have ever truly benefited or excelled from any of the things I've given up in my life (piano, flute, jazz dance, soccer, cello, etc) but my life is far from empty without these things.

Yesterday I realized that I'm starting to feel as free and "me" as I did in high school. I've had moments of this thought occurring in the last 6 months or so, but the thought is really becoming reality. I've started bellydancing regularly again...and just dancing for fun again. I danced for hours last night while listening to my radio show. I HAVE a radio show! I really really love it and get more enjoyment out of it than I could ever imagine enjoying being a librarian. The things I enjoy in life have always been simple things anyway. Perhaps if I had stayed in dance classes as a child I would have lost the joy I get now from dancing like an idiot with zero grace or style.

I do regret not learning a musical instrument, though. I feel I am too uncoordinated, but I know it would just take an inordinate amount of dedication...a trait I've had in life, but usually not in applications that involve working with my hands or "manipulating objects in the physical universe".

Have I essentially talked myself out of school? Maybe, but I feel a responsibility to the wonderful women that wrote me references and encouraged me in this endeavor. I feel I should stick out one semester for THEM. I've never been able to follow through when the motivation doesn't come from me, though, so I make no promises. Either way, I'll be fine.

Unexpected Identity Progression

This year I've strayed far from the path of intention.

I meant to write my face off, but instead I've fallen into the performance of identity. I've started a vlog. I've begun the likely expensive and arduous journey towards becoming a DJ, both on internet radio and at local clubs. I've picked up the eyeliner pencil more times this year than the previous 10 years combined; and this year I've done it not out of a need to make myself "presentable" but out of the same child-like creativity that got me to start wearing makeup in my teens.

I started a new job this year that involves working at all the public service desks at the library (circulation, reference, children's, teen, and computer lab). I was very fearful of taking this position, even though it's the exact thing I've wanted to do at the library since I started there ten years ago. At the last minute I took the job after almost turning it down. The position didn't exist before I took it back in March. As the director told me a few months ago, "You're kind of an experiment." Ha. From my perspective, the experiment is going very well. I've taken over programming for Cari, the teen librarian, while she's on maternity leave and I love it. I was able to see the magic of Summer Reading up close through the eyes of the creative force that is the children's department. I never thought I'd work with children, but I generally like working with all age groups now, though I am still partial to teens and the over 60 crowd. I'm VERY happy with my job(s) now. I have always loved flittering about to different groups of people, and the "floater" position has allowed me to get paid for my tendency to wander.

An unexpected side effect of subverting society's tendency towards caution is that (mostly the imaginary kind of self-imposed) obligation has become irrelevant to me, mostly to my advantage, but often to the cultivation of ennui. Depression caused by inertia or no, my determination to commit to the "flow" remains, because this attitude has led to radio, DJing, and YouTube. Had I stayed the path I set out for myself last December, I wouldn't have made a tiny zine instead of the regular expensive one. Had I walked the premeditated course, I wouldn't have said yes to a DJ gig. I would have simply said, "I'm not a DJ..." and that, as they say, would have been that. It had never occurred to me that I could do it. My instincts for picking the right music at the right time have always existed and I've been making mixes since I was at least 10 years old, but I never thought that I could get paid for it. I have now been paid in a DJ capacity, but not because I decided I could do it. I took the gig and did the thing expecting only to endure it and see how it felt. In the moment, it felt awful. I was paralyzed with anxiety and nerves. Only now, three days later, am I starting to come out of the haze of confused adrenaline to analyze the situation.

Most of my adult life I've analyzed opportunities to death, like I literally kill them on the vine by relentlessly talking myself out of them. Life is easier to navigate when the analysis can happen after the experience. I don't know what changed this year, but I've somehow internalized the mantra I made up for myself LAST year:

Do it now. Be ready later.

This affirmation works for me because I've always stumbled through life, whether I wanted to or not. Before my instincts were smashed by internalized societal insecurities, this was how I operated. I just fucked with things until they made sense, and if they didn't I let them go.

Rupaul gives advice that applies in this blog; something to the effect of taking unexpected opportunities and letting the universe draw you to your purpose. People have been telling me for years that I should DJ and I waved my had, "pfffffft"ing the idea away.

I hate to contradict the above decision to analyze later rather than sooner, but I suspect I might be stumbling towards a more actualized self. If I can stay out of my own way, perhaps I'll be a DJ, a zen house cleaner, a librarian, AND a writer.