All change!

Blog posts are the easiest to write when you've got something to rant about, or it's driven by emotion. That's how I wrote my first articles for my student newspaper, it's how I cover page after page in my diary at night after a particularly special day or weekend. These bursts happen quickly, and if they go on here they get a quick edit and then they're good to go. Sustained blog writing, with sensible, planned posts and thought-out ideas, it turns out, is very difficult to do when your life is taken up by a full-time job, a masters degree and some kind of social life.

This was to be the year I wrote my novel. At least two good ideas are simmering in my brain, waiting to have proper attention paid to them, pen and paper or keyboard at hand. 2017, instead, has been the year I moved in with my best friend, fell in love, got my first proper librarian job, made new friends, and focused all the attention left over on my information and library studies masters.

That leaves... no time for blogging. Which is a shame, because I like gathering my thoughts and spinning them into a semblance of order for anyone to read. Right now I'm hammering this out, post-yoga and pre-dinner out, while my boyfriend plays a video games with dinosaurs in it. There's a strategic plan report assignment whispering from behind this Chrome window, softly demanding some more work, but for now I'd rather clear my head and tap out a little post, roughly ten months after the last one. Hey, this can be my productive procrastination.

I spent my trainee year exploring all kinds of librarianship, shadowing colleagues and counterparts at other university libraries, trekking to London for conferences, networking with librarians across the South West and deciding what kind of librarian I wanted to be. For those outside the profession, this might seem odd, but there are so many directions you can go in as a new professional (and at any point down the line, really!). I fancied working in a health library, as close as I can get to medical practice without actually doing it. Providing information to practitioners, having an indirect impact on medicine and its outcomes.

That's sort of what I'm doing now. Already! I had a few job interviews as my traineeship drew to a close, at UWE Bristol and a couple of other places, including Bristol Zoo! The zoo job sounded amazing, but turned out to be nowhere near as glamorous and interesting as I imagined. I'll probably write another time about how I turned that job down, and the gamble I took in doing it. Now I'm at the NCT (National Childbirth Trust), who own MIDIRS (Midwives Information and Resource Service - bear with me on the acronyms, readers), a library service for midwives and NCT practitioners, giving them the information they need in their studies, research, and practice. I get to write - sort of, making sense of articles and writing up their main points in summaries for the database. Among many other things, but your head would smack the keyboard in boredom if I were to rattle off everything else I do.

This means I now work in Clifton, a beautiful (and very posh) part of Bristol and home to the famous suspension bridge. I wander up to the hill overlooking the bridge and Avon George on my lunchbreaks with a book and watch the tourists over my lunch, it's blissful. I get to walk to work and back every day, racking up the steps on my Fitbit, trailing the nannies as they take very neat and well-spoken children to school, listening to podcasts regularly for the first time in ages.

Everything is going suspiciously well. The masters is pretty stressful, but after a minor breakdown or two about all the work I've got to do, along with pep talks and a kick up the bum every so often from my mum and my boyfriend, it's getting easier to make time and focus on it. It's all got to be done by next September, wish me luck...

I'm reading: The Radleys, by Matt Haig. He writes beautifully and funnily about the human condition (though in this case, it's vampires), and I'm enjoying working my way through his novels. His latest, How to Stop Time, is breathtaking, and I'd buy a copy for everyone I knew if I could. I got to meet him at a book event recently and rambled on embarrassingly at him until he signed my book and I scurried off, bright red.
I'm eating: at Pieminister in Stokes Croft, at least once a fortnight. My housemate and I maintain that pie is medicinal, and this place does the best ones, with delicious sides, rich gravy, and a decent array of craft beers. When I'm not eating there, I'm on a health kick, avoiding chocolate and weekday drinking, and trying to do yoga every day. So, you know, the pie's earned.
I'm listening to: lots and lots of podcasts. I'm working my way through the Guilty Feminist podcast, which I recommend to anyone every chance I get, and it makes me laugh out loud on my walk to work, every single time. I also like Emma Gannon's Ctrl Alt Delete, an interview series, and the hilarious The Debrief, packed with advice about adulting.