Library Day in the Life, Stress Reduction, and Line between Life and Work (work slips into word)

I experienced a very unintended consequence of participating in Library Day in the Life. For several of the previous rounds I have actually created an account of my day but always stopped short of sharing it. Part of my justification was my complete and continuing FAIL when it comes to social media content in the long form--aborted attempts at blogging remain hidden from one the most diligent of searchers, enumerable unposted comments on the content of others have never made it beyond the submit button.  I do better with short/micro forms: I tweet a bit (@smkvt, re-treet on occasion, and try to dm the few of my followers when I am touched by something they tweet. I also do okay with Facebook updates but do best when I can multitask with a tweet and FB status update when it won't confuse my very different groups of followers & friends.

But on to the unintended consequences and the motivation it gave me to create this page as my contribution to day in the life. As I was creating my notes on the bits and pieces of my day (the bare bones of the notes are in this google doc I used as my notepad), I began to notice that my usual stress level was down a notch and my balance between the life of my place of work and my life beyond and around MPOW was just a little more balanced than usual. I think that the narrative fleshed out from my notes will explain things, so here it goes.

6:49 AM  I could not figure out how to compose a new google doc from iphone/ safarii so starting day in the life with a gmail message. I am determined that this attempt at a  dintl contribution will proceed in spite of my diffidence and general FAIL with long-form social media. I have at least started early, now for my usual rush to get out the door in time to find a parking place.

7:57 AM Just as I am getting in door and leaning over to login to my computer while I discard my VT winter required layers along the way, my iPhone marimba .wav kicks in to remind me that it is time to go to our daily 10-15minute meeting to update one another on the days activities. Mostly we are all gabbing about freezing rain and closed exits on I-89 then my boss's assistant kicks off official start of gathering....

8:15 AM I have a pretty short run-through of my email that has arrived since Friday. There is a rather light light load in the inbox and all the immediate actions required are do-able within a few minutes.  The actions include a couple of brief responses and a re-send of message about planned workshops that was sent to wrong addressee. I wish my task list were as simple to deal with as my inbox is this morning....

8:35 AM When I make my trip for morning coffee, I discover that in rush out the door at home,I left my purse on the kitchen table. Thank you, thank you kind coffee lady who will accept payment tomorrow and even offered to loan me money if I needed some to get through day. With caffeine in hand I can sit down to reading 100 + pages of the notice of funding availability (NOFA) for the next round of broadband funding from the feds stimulus funds. The joys of fed-reg-speaks awaits....

11:20 AM  Afeter nearly 3-hours of reading and taking notes I am very encourages that there are so many things in the 116 pages that seem important to how we can  make the case for broadband to public libraries. However, that also makes me concerned about how much of what we can say to make he case will actually get included in the application. The application covers so many other community entities other than libraries that there will only be so much space that can be used to make the specific case for libraries. Next on the reading list is reviewing successful grant applications for the first round...but a little bit of entertainment first. While rushing out the door at home, I could not resist taking a pic of a tiny source of joy

The pants that I put on this morning still retain a neat and crisp crease that my 89-year-old mother put in them when we were doing laundry during our last visit.

1:00 pm so where did that lunch break go? With a conference call coming up in 15 minutes I may try to hold on to the state-designated 45 minutes of lunch break time rather and keep on working until the call.  The rigidity of work hours in state government is a whole other day in the life.

2:00 pm another conference call generates a whole new batch of deadlines, but to keep my sanity, my official 45-minutes of me time starts now!

2:45 pm back to official work time though much of my break was about catching up on tweets that are 50% related at least tangentially to work.  Back to reading reading successful grant applications. I am doing way more reading today than I normally do--at least way more reading of actual muti-page docs.

3:20 pm fist chance of the day to get to me task list. I am very bad at following "getting things done" principals.  I turn the emails and phone calls into tasks, but then they linger....

3:30 pm tasks on back burner while I try to clarify criteria for including certain libraries in broadband grant proposal

3:45 maybe head clear enough to get back to minute details of task at hand

3:55 in between nit-picking activities of updating account information and editing html code to reflect those updates, I let myself stray into trying to explain that "managing library technology" and "managing public access computers" are not the same set of activities.....

4:15 last step in task requires level of concentration required for proofreading (not a strong skill) so in the last 15 minutes of my work day, I think I will explore newly arrived email and check in on my profession-related rss feeds

4:30 hearing iphone clock tower alarm to head home, but as my files sync and computer restarts, think I will call mom to thank her for the crease in my pants

Trapped by a typo: