I'm back!

Sorry for the long absence, everyone. School and my practicum ruled my life until last Friday, and then I had a bunch of personal stuff to catch up on- you know, the stuff I put off because of vacation, ALA, and school.

In the last four days I’ve had no school, I have been…. cleaning. Organizing, really- I have not even started on the down and dirty cleaning work that needs to be done. Oh, I played a little Rock Band and read some and even tried out World of Warcraft (it runs on Linux! and there’s a librarian guild!) but the majority of my time has been spent moving from room to room in my home and dealing with the piles of junk and paper that have accumulated this summer. (That free stuff from ALA kind of exploded all over my house.) I’m finally starting to feel like I have some control over my home environment.

I don’t exactly like cleaning, but it does give me a chance to take stock of where I am. Actually, it forces me to do so. It’s hard to look at a pile of junk and not ask myself “why?” and “what now?” Cleaning also inevitably gets me thinking about moving. I don’t know if this is normal or not; I assume is stems from the fact that I have never lived in one house for more than three years up until now. (Going on FIVE years in the current house!) I also think about moving because I recently applied to a couple of (long shot) jobs out of state.

As I clean my environment, my mind seems to get less cluttered. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

Anyway, now that I have three glorious weeks off, I can start getting in the habit of posting again. I have a bunch of thoughts, many of them about new professionals, career paths and applying for jobs. I suppose it’s only natural that these are the topics that would be on my mind right now, after all, in only a few months I will graduate.

In addition to posting, I have a few other projects:

I am posting on the new ALA READ blog, so keep an eye out for me there. I’m a big fan of the READ posters, so this is exciting for me. I will probably post about design and Photoshop tips for using the READ CD Software, and maybe even some photography tips. I also have some ideas for campaigns a library could run with the aid of the READ CD Software.

My blogs over at OS-agnostic.com and free-artwork.com will see a revival too. I have a few new pieces to post to free-artwork, and am working on some new paintings.

I am working on a couple of presentations coming up in October for the Nebraska Library Association annual conference.

Come August 25th, I’ll be back in school for my final semester. I’m excited about my classes- Libraries and Copyright and a class on Web Application Development.

So, that’s it for me. How is your summer going?