by Naomi House, MLIS
I’m really happy overall since the new year!
By making significant changes to INALJ’s site I am saving myself an incredible amount of time. Me: this year is unapologetically the year of ME giving priority to me, and not just INALJ. It is the year of insisting that my boundaries are respected. I am inflexible about the changes while running INALJ (for now), and I have set boundaries that clearly state, do not contact me about the changes.
Around October of last year I talked to my husband about the effort and time I was putting into INALJ and we both acknowledged without some income coming in from INALJ, it really wasn’t going to be worth the time put in. I put out a call on PayPal & GoFundMe and INALJ’s fans came through! So I decided to continue, but with a major change. I was going back to the pdf version. I dislike the pdf as much as many others do, sometimes my browser is slow loading it, it is clunky and not as useful as the pages were, but the time savings is significant for me and that was what Sana, my husband, and I decided was important.
That is right, WE are what matters in our lives. Our struggles with fertility matter. My health matters. My happiness matters. Sure, INALJ has helped a ton of LIS professionals and it will continue to, but now the time required is reasonable.
No-one is owed INALJ.
For some reason I have been running this site for 5+ years and yet our LIS associations, schools etc have done nothing about making something similar prioritizing wide-net job harvesting and sharing. While I owe you nothing, your associations do. Reach out to them. I hope to make a fantastic connection with some organization this year and go back to the old way, or even better a new and better way of sharing the jobs. But if not, this is so much better a resource than I ever had and I am finally happy with my life and workflow and will continue as is in 2016 or at least, for now.
See those smiles on our faces? THAT is MY 2016 and it is well earned.
PS: Should have also acknowledged that there is much gendered and sexist criticism about me specifically as I refuse to be “nice” and am “inflexible,” but I don’t owe anyone who sends unsolicited or harassing emails etc ‘nice.’ Heck, I just don’t owe anyone nice period.
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