Just Another Day in the Life of Emily

It's that time again!

What time?

Story time with Emily! (As you probably know by now that often takes to form of me regaling you with embarrassing stories. Perhaps I find further mortification edifying, perhaps I want to read upon my misfortunes in my old age and weep, perhaps I simply have a strange sense of humor and find myself humorous. There is humor in the ridiculous. Methinks the last explanation comes closest to the truth, but I will leave you to come to your own conclusions.)

As you know, I recently went on a ski trip. The following is a take away story from that trip and I wish you joy in it. Most people when they go skiing tend to have the normal accident stories that go hand and hand with snow sports. "Whoopsy-daisy, I fell down!" That sort of thing. Not Emily. For a good hour and a half I was accident free (surprised? I thought you had more confidence in me than that! Ehem, who am I kidding?) Honestly, I might have been getting a little bit over confident. I hadn't been skiing in three years and I was speeding down the slope with the greatest of ease. I started composing poetry in my head, I started gazing off in the distance dreamily, I started telling myself I was quite the little skier. I should have known it wouldn't last for long. Now, if we are going to take preferences into account, I'd like to state here and now that I would have preferred to have my comeuppance out of the site of man and beast, but then, our preferences in such cases often don't count for much. My story was not a little fall, it was not a little bump, it was not something that people say "Whoopsy-daisy" about. Oh no, when I fall I take out three people in the process. That's just how Emily's roll. (That was a pun, hardy har har, as you will soon see.) That's right I barrel-rolled. And took out three people. Don't forget that fact. I was just minding my own business, skiing along like the little skier I was, and then I came to the chair lift. Now, let it be known, I don't like getting on chair lifts. Anyways, there was a guy from school waiting at the bottom and I went to say hello because I'm polite, or try to be. So after I finished talking to this guy I said in a chipper tone (because I'm a chipper sort of being) "Well, I'll be seeing you, I'm going to go down again!" Little did I know, that he was the one that would be seeing me: barrel-roll under a chair lift. That's right. I misjudged the time. What can I say? I never had a good sense of timing. There were three innocent looking fellows about to get on a chair, I thought I'd get on the next one, I misjudged the time and skied in too fast and knocked them down like bowling pins. (What's ironic about this is that I'm not good at bowling and I get gutter balls more often than not. That is unless I am the bowling ball. My new mantra in life is don't be the bowling ball. Be anything but the bowling ball. Just don't be the bowling ball.) So the chaps went down, I rolled, I apologized profusely (probably a bit too much, in fact), and now I'm wondering how I can avoid the group of people from school who witnessed the incident for the rest of my college career.

But really, skiing was amazing. I want to go again. Nobody can say I'm not resilient.

My other random story for today is to comment on the young man who walked past the library desk while I was working last night. I don't think you understand, Sir, the complete in-decorum of singing that particular Seven Brides for Seven Brothers song in public. I realize it's a catchy tune, but you might want to remember that there are young ladies present and it might come as quite a shock to one of them to suddenly hear "Bless your beautiful hide wherever you may be..." (you know the rest) sung in a deep voice as you wander your way through the library. Just a suggestion, don't take Adam as a role model. Things turned out for him, but he was very lucky. Very lucky indeed. 

To be a Librarian

If you know me, you probably know that my dream job is to be a Children's Librarian. I have frequent rants about it. Well, rants implies being irritated and launching into a lengthy monologue because of it, what I mean instead would be launching into a lengthy monologue simply because I'm passionate about the subject and enjoy talking about it. I know being a Librarian isn't the best paid job, I know that it might be hard to find a job, I know that there's a lot of school involved, but I also know that it's the thing that I get most excited about, the thing that I want to work towards. I've always loved books and because of that I've always loved libraries. I have been a frequent visitor to my hometown library since before I can remember, and I have been working at libraries since my sixteenth birthday when I was finally old enough to apply for my first job. I'm eighteen now and working part time at the library at my college, as I have mentioned before. I think I officially decided I wanted to be a Librarian the second year of working at my Library. (When I say my library that would be this one: http://www.jclibrary.info/)

I specifically want to be a Children's Librarian because I love kids. That sounds a bit obvious, I know, but I want to be there for them. Education is such a beautiful wonderful thing, and I feel like part of the problem with our education system as it is, is that the love of it is sadly not emphasized. The emphasis is on grades, it's on getting through, and there's something so sad about that. The child who loves to read, who loves to learn, is far more likely to succeed with their education, because they are the ones who are going to go above and beyond. They are the ones who are going to want to pick up books that they read about in other books because they are interested. Instead of just filling the requirements they are going to want to do more, find out more, discover more. Part of the beauty of being a Children's Librarian is that it's part of their job to work out introducing this love of learning. As a Librarian you are outside of the school system, and yet you are someone that students come to for help and advice. Whether it is for school or for free-time, you get to introduce books, all the books that you have loved and that have changed your life.

Also, crafts. Arts and crafts are the best, and guess what a Children's Librarian gets to do? Design fun programs! Summer programs, and programs for drawing, reading, etc, etc. Does that sound like fun or what?

The other reason I want to be a Children's Librarian is something I learned while working at the library over the years. There are so many kids who come to the library who need someone. You see so many kids who so obviously don't have anyone, their home lives are less that ideal. There are kids who come to the library after school because there isn't anyone at home. Or come to the library with their parents and behave terribly, but really what they're doing is seeking attention. Their parent is sitting at the computers and the kid is doing anything that they can think of just to get their parent to pay attention to them, and it's heartbreaking. There are kids who are dressed in mismatch clothes, who haven't had their hair brushed, and there's nothing sadder than that. Those kids need someone. They need someone who's going to care, who wants to listen to them, who wants to hear what they have to say. Everyone needs someone like that in there life, and that person can be all the difference in a child's life. Over the course of working at the library I had kids who would just follow me around while I was shelving books because I was someone to talk to, someone who didn't tell them to go away and be quiet. I want to be that person in those children's lives.

That's why I want to be a Children's Librarian. Why I think working at the library is wonderful. Why I think more people should visit the library. Why I think the library's so very important.

The Book Healer

There once was a girl named Emily who had a bad habit of making too many blogs. I'm sure people grew very tired of it, and none of them could keep track of her because of it. However, Emily felt, there are times when you realize that you're not at all the same person that you were, and because of it, you need a different sort of blog.

I can never bear to delete my previous blog designs however, because I put so much work into them. There were hours upon hours that I spent fiddling with layouts and templates and headers, and the thought of throwing all that away is a bit unbearable. It's like throwing out an old journal, a journal that you feel too old to write in, it's true, but a journal that you spent time with, a journal that was part of yourself. Things like that are too precious to throw out. That's one of the things I love best in writing a blog, as the years pass you have your old writing to read, to remember, and most of it's terrible, but it was you. I guess that's part of the reason why I've periodically felt the need to start a new blog, because I know I can't stay in that place that I was before, I have to move on. I can't stay twelve, writing in pencil with lots of exclamation marks. I can't stay fifteen, blogging about the things one writes about at fifteen. The reason I'm writing this is because I often have to remind myself of it. Nostalgia is something that hits me with a powerful potency. I get to reminiscing and then I moan about how I want to go back and be a little girl again (I know, Mom, I'm a pain. Sorry.)

So this is me. New blog, new place in life. I'm in college now, so I'll probably be writing quite a lot about that. I'm working at the college library, which is where the new name for this blog comes from. One of my great blessings during my first semester was that I was offered a position in the book bindery, so I get to mend books! Which is just about the best thing, let me tell you. Alexandra and Monica dubbed it being a Book Healer, which sounds magical and fairytale worthy (they are also magical and fairytale worthy, but more on that later.)

I'm just about to start my second semester of college, Christmas break is almost over, and that's why I feel now is a good time to be starting this. I don't know how much I'll be able to write during school, because if there's anything I learned during first semester it is there's never enough time for ANYTHING. I do know though, that I will always need a place to write. There will always be times where I need to write myself out, because the words are crying to be written. Writing has always been such a large part of my life, and I know it always will be. Even if I spend most of my blogging time during breaks and summer vacation, I know that I will be jumping at the opportunity to do so. It's nice to know that this will be here waiting for me.

I think that's where I shall end this. It has the feeling of a very good beginning, a very good beginning indeed.