A life change

I recently reduced my hours at work, went from a 36 1/2 hour full-timer, to a 20-hour-a-week part-timer. It's been a little strange adapting to the change. Except for part-time jobs during my 3 1/2 years of college, year and a half of graduate school, and a year and a half when I lived in Maine the first time, I've worked full-time, 35-40 hours a week, my entire adult life, since I was 18.

But I'm adapting! To going in later, leaving earlier, not pushing myself so relentlessly. This is, after all, exactly what I was seeking, when I asked my Board if I could reduce my hours. Semi-retirement, the closest thing to the real thing I could afford at the present time. And in case you're wondering how the Starving Librarian could afford such a move: Social Security benefits are supposedly going to offset the reduction in income. I won't be making any more money, but shouldn't make any less, either, if the lady at the Social Security office and I got our figures right.

Truly, I'm worn out. I'm ready to be retired. I've had a lot of trouble with extreme fatigue, and I'm hoping this will help. If nothing else, it should help my mental fatigue.

Besides having to adapt to actually having more time for the rest of my life, I'm having to adapt to being more focused at work, less easily distracted, less inclined to do things that other members of my staff can do. I've never been so diligent about prioritizing. And fortunately, this change came at a time when there were no looming crises or deadlines, which crop up from time to time.

One thing that I am hoping will make this change even more successful is that I have hired, with my Board's approval, a person to handle the planning, scheduling and publicizing of programs for the library. As those of you who have followed this blog regularly surely know by now, arranging programs is my least favorite aspect of my job, of public librarianship in general. Librarian as social director, just not my thing. I can only hope it is our new staff member's thing.

My Board approved this on a trial basis; we are to see if the library can manage without a full-time director. Wish me luck.