(no subject)

Resolving to make more bad decisions is a great New Year's resolution. First of all, it gives me justification to do just about anything I want to do. Second of all, if I accidentally make a bad decision, it retroactively justifies it! I'm going to resolve that every year!

Something tells me that T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics would like this line of reasoning, which makes me mildly suspicious of it.

Nevertheless: I'm going to Wiscon!

(no subject)

It's strange.

For months I couldn't get any traction whatsoever with YA programs. I'd get three people, four people, zero people. I'd get nine-year-olds and eleven-year-olds if I got anybody (well, this is still basically true). Tonight, I had fourteen kids in to make duct tape wallets, and I was glad it wasn't any more because it's like herding cats.

I wasn't surprised when I had more luck with the library in Garner - it's just more middle-class, and it's religious in such a way that all the religious homeschoolers make the library a big part of their education, and you have a certain level of captive audience for a program. I can't identify big obvious differences here. The community here is not so dissimilar from the library where I worked before... except that you can actually get pre-teens to come and do crafts with you.

I tried really, really hard not to take my failure personally. But I also didn't really have the kind of training & mentorship that could've led me to assess what I was doing wrong and what I could do better and what I just couldn't control. That's why I think I'd be okay coming to that library, or a similar one, maybe five or ten years in the future. In the meantime it's really good to have a little less insecurity gnawing at me.