Articles

February Resolutions

by Diana La Femina, Head Editor, INALJ South Carolina

February Resolutions

diana la feminaNew Year’s Resolutions are beautiful things. They’re full of hope and optimism. We make lofty goals and envision our success. And then February rolls around, and most people look back at their resolutions and see failure in one short month.

Perhaps your resolution was all-or-nothing, perhaps it was out of reach, or perhaps you were just so exhausted from the holidays that you crashed and didn’t have the energy to work towards anything. Regardless, those resolutions are now bitter memories. (Unless you’ve actually stuck to your resolutions, in which case congratulations! You’re far better at setting achievable goals than I.)

So I’m making a call for February Resolutions. Let’s make resolutions for the New Year (slightly delayed) that are a bit more realistic, and that take obstacles into account. Here are mine:

  • I’m going to do one thing every week to help my career (working on my portfolio [which I hope to make into a future blog post], sending out emails, etc.).
  • I’m going to read three articles every week relating to libraries and librarianship.
  • Once a month I’m going to take a day and be as lazy or self-indulgent as I want; no guilt over staying in my pyjamas all day, or spending money to get my hair cut or see a movie.
  • I’m going to read one book per month (I’ve had NO TIME to read since I started my job in March, and it’s killing me a little inside every day).
  • Once every month or two I’m going to volunteer somewhere in some way that has nothing to do with my career.
  • I’m going to aim to eat as healthy as I can, meal plan, and exercise; not to lose weight or deprive myself, but to feel as healthy as I can manage.

These are all ideals and things for me to aspire to. I will inevitably slip up from time to time, but there’s no point in putting myself down for it. Things happen and get in the way, but the important thing is to look to your goals as ideals. They’re not practical steps to get somewhere, nor should they be. It’s the whole “shoot for the moon and if you fail you’ll still be amongst the stars” thing. (Which always annoyed me, by the way, because astronomically speaking stars are light years further from us than the moon, but the thought is pretty.) If you aim for these goals and be gentle with yourself you’ll improve regardless of whether you achieve your goals or not. But they shouldn’t be things that you MUST do. None of this, “I’ll lose 20 lbs by March 1st” or anything. If the goal is quantifiable then it should be something realistic.

 

Naomi House

Naomi House, MLIS, is the founder and publisher of the popular webzine and jobs list INALJ.com (formerly I Need a Library Job) and former CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of T160K.org, a crowdfunding platform focused on African patrimony, heritage and cultural projects. INALJ was founded in October 2010 with the assistance of her fellow Rutgers classmate, Elizabeth Leonard. Its social media presence has grown to include Facebook (retired in 2016), Twitter and a LinkedIn group, in addition to the interviews, articles and jobs found on INALJ. INALJ has had over 21 Million page hits and helped many, many thousands of librarians find employment! Through grassroots marketing, word of mouth and a real focus on exploring unconventional resources for job leads, INALJ grew from a subscription base of 20 friends to a website with over 500,000 visits in one month. Naomi believes that well-sourced quantity is quality in this narrow job market and INALJ reflects this with many new jobs published daily. She has also written for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 LexisNexis Government Info Pro and many other publications in the past decade. She presents whenever she can, including serving on three panels at the American Library Association's Annual Conference in Las Vegas; as breakout presenter at OCLC EMEA in Cape Town, South Africa; as a keynote speaker at the Virginia Library Association annual meeting; at the National Press Club in Washington DC; McGill University in Montreal, Canada; the University of the Emirates, Dubai, MLIS program and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Naomi was a Reference, Marketing and Acquisitions Librarian for a contractor at a federal library outside Washington, DC, and has been living and working in Budapest, Hungary and Western New York State. She spent years running her husband’s moving labor website, fixed and sold old houses and assisted her husband cooking delicious Pakistani food. She is preparing to re-enter the workforce and is job hunting. Her husband is now the co-editor of INALJ, a true support!  She has heard of spare time but hasn’t encountered it lately. She pronounces INALJ as eye-na-elle-jay. 

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