<sweep, sweep, sweep> Dusting off the cobwebs. It’s been a minute since I’ve visited this Friday spot. Happy New Month! (Happy New Year!)
I found out yesterday that I lost out on another opportunity/award in my professional organization. It’s true what folks say when they lose in these situations, i.e., that it’s an honor to be asked to serve or it’s an honor to be nominated, to be recognized by some of your peers enough to put your name (your person and your body of work) forward. But it wouldn’t be true of me to say that it doesn’t hurt just a bit to lose. So, feeling a bit melancholy about this organization today, I decided to watch the “Meet the Candidates” recording from Wednesday that offered those running for the office of President Elect and the open Board Member seats the opportunity to answer questions related to the organization and our profession as a whole. I’m glad that I did.
It’s good to be reminded, particularly when you’re feeling a little down, of the positive energy of others. I appreciated the many comments that focused on connection and that sense of belonging that means a lot to anyone who’s found a home in a group, professional or otherwise. It’s the lack of these things, I believe in large part, that causes organizations to die. Though a bit dated now, Robert Putnam’s seminal work, Bowling Alone, that came out back in 2000 began a deep discourse into the experience and feeling of disconnect that many in America were struggling to understand. Add on an almost-quarter-of-a-century’s worth of the Internet, social media, cell phones, and a global pandemic, and the expressions and concerns of isolation (both individually and on a national scale) are now considered a health crisis. An epidemic.
It’s a paradox, our society today. We have this ability to connect with anyone from anywhere, and yet this same capacity can lead us to seldom be with anyone. In her beautiful book, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Olivia Laing artfully shares the experience that many know today, i.e., how it is sometimes easiest to be alone when you’re surrounded by people (in the case of her story, living in New York City). The same is true for our connecting devices, our on-line social networks, our Zoom calls, and our DoorDash apps. Surround yourself with all of these things and in time you don’t really need to fully be with anyone. It’s convenience at a cost, however.
We had a discussion in our library management meeting this week (again) about ensuring that people feel connected, appreciated, part of something bigger while working here. And for the first time I admitted that I don’t feel it’s possible anymore – at least not in the way that we once defined it. We have chosen other ways of doing work and after 4 years of doing so, we’re past the point where that old sense of work culture is going to exist. A pandemic forced choices upon us, but we also made choices – choices that we like and appreciate. Flexibility, today, is the thing that people want more than anything else at work. We have ensured flexibility. That was a choice. And choices have consequences, positive, negative, indifferent. We need to mourn them (if we’re sad about it) and then move on in new and different ways. And for those of us who might be sad about the changes – and I include myself, because I do feel lonelier at work with fewer people around – we have to accept the responsibility to find connections in other places and other ways.
These thoughts remind me of an experience I’ve been mulling over for months now. I attended my younger niece’s wedding celebration in Richmond, Virginia last November. I was apprehensive about going for a number of reasons, but in the end was very glad that I did. I saw my brother and sister-in-law, both nieces and their husbands (neither of whom I’d met), my nephew and his girlfriend (also new to me), an aunt and uncle. I sat at the family end of the table, but in reflecting on it I can’t help but think how much I realized that I’m not part of that family. They are a really wonderful family, very close to one another. But I made choices over the past 25-30 years that made it so that we didn’t see each other often. And this had consequences. I have a family of origin that I don’t know much at all. We missed too much of one another’s lives.
I think about how the same thing can (will) happen with our work families over time. That sense of connectedness can get lost when we don’t see one another regularly. It’s easier to fall into silos or to focus on our individual (or department) projects. But it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We can make other choices and move forward in new and different ways that will redefine who we are as a group, instead of what we once knew and/or expected.
But it IS hard to feel a part of a group where you don’t know the people very well, so we have to attend to the things that can build connections. Those groups that mean something to us can remain relevant and important to us if/when we make new choices and accept new consequences. I heard this tone in some of the comments of the candidates today, giving me hope for my professional home. I look forward to seeing who wins (and sharing the pangs of loss with those who don’t), as well as where they will lead us.
A Librarian by Any Other Name 