Work on Wednesday: An Explanation

I will go through my life a childless woman.

Please don't think "Oh, no! How awful!" It's by my own choice that my life has taken that path. I've never been fond of children...or at least children that I do not know. (Which is most children). As I so delicately phrased it once, "Someone forgot to wind up my biological clock." I wasn't going to let children be the "deal-breaker" of a relationship; if my life partner wanted one, fine, I'd pop out a couple and probably make a dang fine parent. Strict, no doubt, but affectionate and involved. However, if left to my own devices, if I had my druthers, I would choose not to bear children. Apart from the not-really-wanting them, there's the whole issue of rearing them. Rearing children is a brave act in the current world, and I admire every parent who turns out a good kid. I believe that a child benefits from a stay-at-home parent (not necessarily mother) and I would have liked to be that parent, at least until they started elementary school. Anything else would be not cool, as far as I'm concerned, but still--how do parents manage to make a single-income household happen? It boggles.

One of the many points of compatibility between me and Himself is our mutual goals with regards to children: not having them. Or, in his case, not having any more. He has two sons already, one fully-grown (Himself is ten years older than me, and got started with the baby-making very early, which means I was still playing with my Barbie dolls while he was...well...playing with his Barbie doll), and that's quite enough.

So, no children. I have an unofficial godchild in Wesley the Hoosier Dude, and a more handsome bairn there never was. And I have my stepsons. And that's it. And everyone is more than happy with this. I have other things, other interests, other desires; and more than that, I have my career.

A career and a child are not mutually exclusive. Nor are they particularly comparable (apples and oranges, actually). But my career is where a HUGE portion of my energy is focused, and so it only seems fair that my blog focuses on it, at least a little, in the same way that some of the blogs that I read focus at least some on their children. My career is not the only thing that defines me, but it is one of the things. And it's a major point within this blog to explore how I can successfully combine the identities of "career girl" and "home manager."

So, there's that.

Fortunately, I love my career. I'm an adult services librarian, which sounds much naughty than it is. Essentially, I'm an information mistress, a book maven, and a ditch-digging data dude. I work with the public, I get paid to be curious and research, I have a wide variety of duties, and I am constantly exposed to more, more, more information. I get to learn new stuff all the time. I love my bosses (and there are quite a few of them), and I love my colleagues.

In short, in choosing to be a librarian, I chose to spend a good deal of my life in Heaven on Earth--which should hopefully make for some interesting reading when it comes to Work on Wednesdays!