I’ve been on a quest for some time now, which I’ve hinted at before in this space. I want to decouple myself from the wildly unhealthy WASP conception of work which pervades North American society. I started doing this in early 2020, after a crash and severe burnout and depression. This turned out to be timely, of course; my early foundation of rejecting the centring of work in my life was shaky but I was in not a bad place for the world-shattering year which was 2020. I also have an accountability partner, in a good friend. Mostly we send hostile messages to one another when one of us is suffering from misplaced guilt or about to take on something she shouldn’t, but we also share readings and how our practices in trying to take care of ourselves are going. We do yoga. We are trying to prioritize our health in a system which doesn’t care about it. We are trying to prioritize us in a system which only cares about what we produce.
This is not perfect, of course. Sometimes our past selves do something silly, like volunteer to plan a national conference, with which our current selves and our new outlook on life must deal. Sometimes we slip, because the pressures of always being on, always being productive, always working never go away. I can set boundaries about never reading my email outside of work or only on corporate-issued devices (which I leave in my office), but there is always someone out there unwilling to set the same boundaries and then they project that onto you. Sometimes, despite the growing pushback on the centring of work in our society, you are still very much a minority in your workplace when it comes to not wanting to give your whole self all the time, and wanting to have a little bit left of yourself for you.
While I was headed down this path pre-COVID, COVID gave me a foundation for what I needed to do. The world shut down, and all that was left was work - and as a non-patient facing healthcare worker who did not need to be in the hospital yet was forced to, I was confronted with how disposable I really was. Having it laid out so starkly for you, how little someone cares if you live or die, if you’re in needless danger or not, shatters you. And then it changes how you interact with those people and bodies forever from that point. I am not alone in this. This isn’t even a unique realization! But it was one I needed to have, and it was very helpful for establishing my boundaries, even in a world and system which wasn’t setting up any guardrails for me.
An additional layer of complexity is the role of vocational awe and how central it is to libraries. I’ve touched on it before, but trying to extract yourself from the narrative you’ve told about your career choice, the narrative the field likes to reinforce, and then also from society, is a challenge. My kneejerk response often forgets the lessons we have learned, and acts like criticism of libraries is criticism of me, personally, before remembering belatedly that my entire identity is not my job. Or that I have other parts of my life which I want to focus on.
Enter three keys readings I’ve done this year. I started compiling this reading list at last year’s national conference, surprisingly. The one which was merely a dress rehearsal for my year of pain, one where we helped plan but were not responsible. In between taking notes and being overwhelmed by Niagara Falls, I was able to have a conversation with a few friends and colleagues where we discussed the need to slow down, and what was helping us. One of my friends recommended The Sabbath, by Abraham Joshua Heschel. It’s a rabbinical text, she told us, but you don’t need to be interested in the religious aspects of it. It was really helpful.
Very good. I stuck it on my list, and after looking for it on the public library catalogue, set it aside as something I would get to later. And then, this winter. Two more books came out which seemed to supplement The Sabbath nicely: Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, by Jenny Odell, and Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, by Katherine May. We had actually discussed Odell’s previous work, How to Do Nothing, alongside The Sabbath at conference in 2022, but I’d already read How to Do Nothing at that point. A reread wouldn’t kill me, but the thought of it wasn’t drawing me in. But Saving Time? I could work with that.
My accountability partner was the one who suggested Enchantment, and so I got that too, slowly forming an idea in my mind that I would read them this winter/spring, as a way of helping myself get out of this conference planning hole I was sitting in. I was going to have a life after, and I needed to focus myself on my quest once more: give more of myself to me. Let go of the self-worth I still had tied up in my work identity, and continue to build my boundaries.
Something I started doing last year was having what I refer to as a bed book. A bed book is not my regular book, which I read during the day. A bed book is a specific book I keep on my nightstand and read a chapter or two immediately before I go to sleep. This allows me to savour the book, to keep myself from gobbling it whole in a matter of hours. Not that I mind doing that; quite the opposite. But a bed book puts some limits on my tendency to race through.
These books needed to be bed books.
I started with The Sabbath, a slim, unassuming volume. I’m not Jewish, and while I have an okay understanding of Judaism for a Gentile, I did need to some searching for clarity on some practices and philosophies in Judaism while reading this - I wanted to have a strong understanding of the book, to help build my foundation. The Sabbath is about the sacred value of the Sabbath day, the healing and joyous practice of having one day devoted to G-d, but also family, friends, and a removal from the regular daily grind. Heschel discusses the wonder that is having a day prescribed for rest and relaxation, so that one can attend to the rest of their lives the six other days of the week. Furthermore, you have six other days of the week to work, you need a day for taking care of your mind and that which is important to you. ”Rest even from the thought of labour,” he writes, which was so perfect to me that I texted my friend.
Yes, this is what I want. But how can I do that, how can I practice my own form of it when I don’t practice religion and have that guiding post? How do I hold myself to that practice? This was the question I took with me into Enchantment, which was a natural extension of how to go about resting and becoming closer to the world again. Katherine May explores the small pleasures of the world; after drifting away from understanding these, she starts to explore things she hadn’t in some time, looking for magic in the world. This is also fuelled in part and during the acute phases of COVID-19. Do you need permission to find joy in splashing in the ocean, or going on a walk through a garden? No, you don’t. But sometimes we need the reminder. Enchantment is that reminder, and also the literary equivalent of finding yourself in little moments of wonder.
Saving Time is the final book in my trifecta of reading for self-improvement this spring. Saving Time was a bit of a departure from the first two, a more academic text which explores time, framed by a wandering journey through the Bay Area, simply observing her surroundings. Odell deals with the theory of time, the history of standardized time, and so much more. It’s more about reframing how you view time, rather than providing practical tips on how to deal with time. Saving Time wants you to understand your conception of time as a way to extract more labour from you, for profit.
It also quoted from The Sabbath, so you know, I was on board with all of this.
Did I have any earth-shattering revelations from any of these? No, of course not. I don’t expect them to monumentally change my life. But what they did do was help me sharpen my thinking on what I wanted to and how I want to live my life. Each of these books did help me build a stronger foundation for self-care, which is really what I wanted: setting boundaries, rejecting the notion of “maximizing” my time, and remembering to find joy in little things. I sat in the doorway of my house on Sunday, when torrential rain was falling, so I could watch it. That’s not wasted time! But somewhere along the way, I had decided it was and stopped doing those things. No matter how much you want to reject the norms of your environment, you still pick them up.
I needed these reminders, very badly. And maybe if you’re feeling a little lost these days, a little out of sorts after ~everything~ lately, may I suggest one or all of these books? I don’t want to have to need these books to remember how to be, but I’m also a realist: I don’t live in a world where I don’t need these reminders or this help. So my quest continues, with a more solid base of understanding why I feel like I do, and the words to articulate what I need to do going forward, like spending more time watching the rain fall.
Much food for thought here. The books sound like they'd be good reads and I'm glad you have an accountability partner. I've thought about documenting my own work life journey because in some ways it's atypical and also I've experienced some significant lows but not sure I'm ready to do that. Glad you have weathered your own storms successfully.
I’ve been on a similar journey for quite some time , Alison😊 it’s so hard to unlearn the need to work, to prove you are in fact worthy or enough or more than a certain role. I have a monumental list of bed books if you’d ever like to read more- perhaps I’ll put them together in a list here on my substack! Also a relatable concept- I either read a book in one sitting or slowly over the course of years 😂