{"id":74069,"date":"2015-06-30T12:35:21","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T17:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=74069"},"modified":"2015-06-30T12:34:23","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T17:34:23","slug":"you-and-me-and-library-makes-three-negotiating-dual-career-households","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=74069","title":{"rendered":"You & Me & Library Makes Three: Negotiating Dual-Career Households"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Alphild Dick, former Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Washington<\/a>
\npreviously published 6\/9\/14<\/em><\/p>\n

You and Me and Library Makes Three: Negotiating Dual-Career Households<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"alphild-dick\"<\/a>When I started library school, I was under few illusions that finding the traditional librarian\u00a0position that I wanted would be easy. And time consuming. And frustrating. It was the reality\u00a0of pursuing work that I was passionate about. As time passed, I had the good fortune to find\u00a0work in my preferred field and in my community. But life, as it can be, gets tricky.<\/strong> Why? My\u00a0\u201ccommunity\u201d is not exactly my community. In addition to being a degreed librarian and a card-carrying member of ALA, I am also a military spouse.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m proud of my husband and the work that he does. He works 12-14 hour days and he is\u00a0passionate about what he does. Moreover, as a medical officer, he compensated well and gets\u00a0good benefits, including a pretty gold-star retirement plan. However, it is not a career path that\u00a0is friendly to a dual-career household, especially when one party has career goals that are as\u00a0localized as a public librarian\u2019s. At some point, we\u2019ll get marching orders. Who knows where we\u00a0will end up and what I will end up doing. This eventuality is stressful, especially since I love my\u00a0job so, so much. I\u2019ll admit it: Having to possibly give up what I worked hard to get makes me\u00a0frustrated, and a little bitter. There is, of course, the alternative: he could leave the military and\u00a0pursue a more stable (for me) career path. But this means asking ourselves some pretty tough\u00a0questions. Is it my career that takes priority? Is it actually better for me to make the sacrifice, or\u00a0him?<\/p>\n

Looking beyond the military, our situation is not uncommon for dual-career households.<\/strong> There\u00a0are compromises to be made when two people are both in love and professionally driven,\u00a0especially early in their careers. Me? I love my job. I wouldn\u2019t change it for the world. But would I\u00a0for my husband?<\/p>\n

From my friends and family, I keep getting the same advice: only the two of you can decide\u00a0what is right. But sometimes this well-meaning advice feels pretty useless. In these situations,\u00a0sometimes you just want someone to tell you what to do. Barring a fairy godmother who comes\u00a0bearing sage advice, though, knowing what questions to ask might be the next best thing.<\/p>\n

1. Is there anything else that you would be happy doing?<\/strong> Would I be just as happy working as\u00a0a freelance researcher while living the highly mobile military lifestyle? Would my husband enjoy\u00a0taking a more sedate civilian job in the healthcare industry? Egos aside, just how tied are you to\u00a0the exact thing you are doing\/want to be doing? (It\u2019s fine to be tied to it, by the way.)<\/p>\n

2. Who else will the decision affect?<\/strong> If you have kids or other dependents, this question can be\u00a0especially weighty. Healthcare, schools, the need to provide a stable environment, proximity to\u00a0family and loved ones, connections to community–the list of things that need to be considered\u00a0goes on.<\/p>\n

3. How will this decision affect your financial security?<\/strong> Depending on a variety of factors\u00a0(student loans come to mind pretty quickly), this may be a more pressing issue for some than\u00a0others. Most of us don\u2019t go into librarianship to make millions, but we generally don\u2019t want to go\u00a0broke either. I may want to save the world through librarianship, but I\u2019d also like to save money\u00a0for retirement.<\/p>\n

4. What is best for your team?<\/strong> And by team, I mean the two of you and your family. Our\u00a0personal lives are just as valuable as our work lives. Will choosing one path over the other lead\u00a0to a better work-life balance for the two of you? For us, the reality is that a life outside of the\u00a0military is much lower key. One of the great things about public librarianship in my area? A strict\u00a0adherence to the 40-hour work week.<\/p>\n

5. Who has more flexibility?<\/strong> In theory, a librarian could find a job anywhere. There are libraries\u00a0of all sorts all across the country. There are even more options when you branch out from\u00a0traditional librarian jobs and look at the pretty amazing breadth of what trained librarians are\u00a0capable of doing. But the appeal of this depends on how wedded you are to your particular\u00a0professional goals and interests. (Once again, that\u2019s totally cool if you are.)<\/p>\n

6. What are your long-term plans for your career?<\/strong> For your life? Your partner\u2019s? My own goals\u00a0include being the director of a library, write a novel, and retiring to Croatia; my husband\u2019s are\u00a0to get his Master\u2019s of Heath Administration, rebuild an old car, and retire to Croatia (at least we\u00a0share one goal in common!). How do these three very different things come together? What do\u00a0I need to accomplish these things? This question can be helpful, but it has its pitfalls. To quote\u00a0George R.R. Martin, \u201cDifferent roads sometimes lead to the same castle.\u201d<\/p>\n

My husband and I don\u2019t have any answers at this point, but we have open lines of\u00a0communication on the subject and both want the other to be happy. The only thing I can say\u00a0for sure here is that professional flexibility is usually a good thing. It is a mistake to think we\u00a0can only have professional success in one set of circumstances. Librarians are used to being\u00a0resourceful, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alphild Dick, former Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Washington previously published 6\/9\/14 You and Me and Library Makes Three: Negotiating Dual-Career Households When I started library school, I was under few illusions that finding the traditional librarian\u00a0position that I wanted would be easy. And time consuming. And frustrating. It was the reality\u00a0of pursuing work that I was…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":67680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[146,6192,69,3592,6285,6284,3656,228,6286],"class_list":["post-74069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-advice","tag-alphild-dick","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-compromising","tag-dual-career-household","tag-inalj-washington","tag-questions","tag-the-right-questions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/aphid.dick2_.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-jgF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/67680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}