Having a great time today
I am having a great time today. Why is that?
I'm listening as we speak to an in-studio version of The Hold Steady's "Stuck Between Stations" (along with a variety of other songs earlier, including Stars and Sons by Broken Social Scene and The Song Remains the same by Led Zeppelin):
There was that night that we thought John Berryman could fly
But then he didn't so he died
She said "you're pretty good with words but words won't change your life"
Yeah, and they didn't, so he died
And he was drunk and exhausted but he was critically acclaimed and respected...
I also just found, I'm not sure how, a link to Randy Pausch's last lecture before he died of cancer. I haven't even watched it yet - I saw the first two minutes - but I can't wait to look at it, because it seems to be along the lines of what I'm thinking about lately. Not death, no, but life, and following your spirit, and defining exactly what it is that you are and want to be. Exploring the self and then defining the self - that's where I'm on my journey today.
What I haven't told you up to this point is that I'm going back to school, as of this past January. I'm not going to school for an MBA, or a PhD in library science, though those would certainly be worthy goals to further a career in information. I'm going back to school for a Masters in Counseling. An interesting shift in focus, but really not falling too far from information work.
Information work is ultimately a helping profession. You are helping people navigate the sea of information out there to get what they need: the data point, the full picture, the view of the future, the relevant and seminal information that they need. It's the wisdom of the information interview, right? You talk through with your client/requester/etc. what they're trying to accomplish, and you essentially broaden their thinking about their information needs. Ideally, you kind of reframe the question for them, and so reframe how you move forward from there.
Counseling is just like this - it's about reframing, it's about helping someone who has hit a roadblock somewhere. It's helping remove barriers to moving forward. A lot more personal, to be sure, but not a dissimilar process.
The great benefit is I also get to do my own work through this - part of which I illustrated above - and I think this is why I'm in such a good place right now.
Maybe I'm just in tune with everything today. Maybe I'm willing to tap into it for all its joy and sorrow and excitement and disappointment and, finally, the sheer amazement of it all.
That said, I have a wiki training to go prepare for 
