The Super Hero Librarian's Journey

I’ve had a checkered past, loaded with more jobs and degrees than I care to admit. So, when I finally found myself working at a library and going to school for my MLS degree, it was like coming home. After years of searching, I’d found the place I belonged. Yes, I love the job, but I also discovered there were other people in the world like me. People who’d done an assortment of jobs, studied an assortment of subjects, until they’d finally realized that working at a library was the work they’d been preparing for all our lives; work that needed people with diverse experiences, interests and education. Here were people, who against all odds and everything they were told they should be and do, were willing to follow their own interests and hold out for that elusive thing, work they loved and were good at.

Sheila Henderson in her article “’Follow Your Bliss’: A Process for Career Happiness,” points out that Joseph Campbell’s idea of the hero’s journey and following your bliss are what career happiness is really about.[1] In her study of 8 individuals who identified themselves as being very happy in their jobs, Henderson found that 7 of them had taken rather “meandering paths” to their careers.[2] In my job struggle to get to the library, people often told me I should just pick something and stick with it. The idea of searching for a job that really answers something within us, isn’t always accepted by society. Yet, it is key to career happiness and a common path, I believe, for librarians.

The 8 individuals Henderson interviewed, all from different walks of life, exemplified Campbell’s concept of “following your bliss.” They all spent time finding out who they were, what they were good at, where they found meaning, and they didn’t give up. They kept searching until they found the career that fit. My path to the library mirrored that search of looking for my own “bliss.” Yet, I’m realizing that the search, or the “following” doesn’t stop simply because I’m now the library director. Henderson states that “work satisfaction depends on an ability to recognize and follow one’s interest.”[3] So even as I try to spin plates and keep everything going in my small library, I need to keep my eye on what are the parts of the job that I’m good at, that make my soul sing, that put me in the “flow.” Because those are the tasks, I’m not willing to give away, to delegate, to let take a back seat to the myriad of tasks there are to do. It doesn’t do me or the library any good to let go of the parts of the job I’m good at.

Flow, Henderson writes, “requires a challenge for which one’s skills are well matched but still optimally challenged such that the fullest of mind/body faculties combine to succeed.”[4] In others words, I need work that matches my skills and talents, that utilizes them, and that pushes me a little to learn and grow. For me at least, learning more librarian skills does that. Learning how to change the light bulbs, call the repair person, and understand how the elevator works, doesn’t! So my first task, in trying to wear the many different hats of a library director, is to always be mindful, to try to know, which hats I really like, which tasks I’m really good at, what parts of the job make my heart sing. Regularly, I need to take stock of that. Even if today, my time is consumed with things that don’t put my in “flow”, I want to be moving toward a future where those tasks can be taken over by people whose “bliss” they are and I can be creating a job description as library director that allows me to continue to “follow my bliss.” That’s what got me here after all, and that’s what I want to have keep me here.

And the same is true for my employees. Often, I find myself pulling out my hair because of the mistakes employees make and feeling like I’ve said over and over again how to do this task or that. Yet, lately I’ve been wondering what would happen if the focus wasn’t on getting the job done correctly, but on getting employees into the jobs they are best suited for. Of course, in a small library that’s harder to do. Specialization isn’t always possible. There are too many tasks and too few people.

Yet, what got me into the library was working at the circulation desk. I’m incredibly good at it. I know the books. I know the computer system. I know the patrons and I can multi-task easily. Do I need to spend more time working the desk myself and delegate to employees jobs I’m not as good at, that they may be better suited to do? There are some jobs, I recognize, I just can’t give anyone else to do. I’m the one who is responsible for certain jobs, including supervision and monetary concerns. And there will always be jobs that no one wants to do! Yet, figuring out what is legitimate to delegate and what isn’t, what my talents and skills are and what others talents and skills are the first steps. Then jobs can be assigned not just because they need to be done, but because doing them allows all of us to “follow our bliss.”
[1] Henderson, S. (2000). “Follow your Bliss:’ A process for career happiness.” Journal of Counseling & Development. Summer 2000. 78: 305-315.
[2] Ibid. p. 309.
[3] Ibid. p. 306
[4] Ibid, p. 306