Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope this week has been treating you well. We are on Spring Break at my university so the campus and library have been quiet and it has been a wonderful week for getting things done. I wanted to share a few thoughts on the importance of break weeks, or something similar, along with a few bits of fun.
I love being an academic librarian. I love the students. I love the work. And I sometimes even love the frenetic energy on campus. But this last term just about had me crawling under my desk in search of some quiet and calm. It was a chaotic term for everyone I talked with, not just those of us in the library. No one is sure why, but it completely zapped our energy reserves. This break week, even though the library is open (albeit limited hours), has been a joyous bit of calm between the storms.
Break week isn’t a week of zoning out or goofing off. We don’t have it as vacation, unlike some of the other faculty and students. Instead, it is a week of catching up and diving into those projects that take a backseat to the urgent demands of teaching and other work during the term. For me, it has been a week of research and writing, getting to delve deeply into projects that I had to neglect while teaching two credit-bearing classes and doing more committee work than I care to remember.
I’ve actually been able to get into a state of flow with my work, which never happens during the quarter. I’ve been able to finish another round of analysis on a large stack of transcripts, complete a conference paper and presentation, and check of a half-dozen other smaller projects that need to be finished. And, I’ve hardly had to look at the clock at all. Without interruptions or meetings that section off my time into hour increments that may work for busywork, but don’t work for deep thinking and analysis, I’ve felt more relaxed and accomplished at the end of the day than I have for a longer time than I care to admit.
It is hard brainwork, deep thinking, but satisfying in a way that urgent emails and fixing work for committees will never be for me.
It is a reminder that we need time like this to think and to plan so that when we take action, it will be thoughtfully considered instead of a reaction. If you can carve this out into your week or month, you are fortunate indeed. If you are an administrator, my hope for you is that you would figure out a way to carve out this time for your staff if you aren’t as fortunate as my library to have built in “downtime” like the break week, where work can be done without interruption.
We, as the faces of the library, are public serving and public-facing, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need some time for reflection and flow work, too.
As for fun, because we need fun, too, check out Smashing Magazine’s Easter Icon Set (it’s free). And, if you are in the San Jose, California area on April 9th, check out the S.F. Bay Area Printers’ Fair & Wayzgoose. It sounds like it should be fantastic!
I hope you have a wonderful weekend filled with good times and good reads! I’ll be back soon with thoughts on our spring exhibit and graphic design for librarians.