20th Anniversary
Sep. 2nd, 2025 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
burendasan4Yesterday I got an automated email from LiveJournal congratulating me on the "achievement" of my LiveJournal's 20th anniversary. Turns out that TODAY is the anniversary. My first entry was September 2, 2005! So I figured I would write a commemorative post.
Yes, I still have my LiveJournal up on their site and have NOT deleted it like I said I would (probably should). While I have posted exclusively on Dreamwidth since March 2018, I did port over everything I had written on my LJ before then and consider my Dreamwidth journal a continuation of that LJ that I started...20 years ago??
I know the phrase has become cliche, but it's hard to believe it's been 20 years since I started this journal. At the same time it feels so long ago because my life was so much different back then. I was working at the public library in my hometown and was looking to apply to library school. For a long time, I used this LJ to meaningfully connect with my friends. We would write entries, sharing what was going on in our lives and we would respond to each other's posts with thoughtful comments. None of this "thumbs up" button...!
I really love having this Dreamwidth journal and continuing to write on it...even if it's very seldom. But honestly, with pretty much all my friends having long abandoned their journals, it's not the same. We have succumbed to the social media platform and trying to go against that is like trying to swim against a whitewater current. I have written about my frustrations with the Peach platform but at this point, the connections I've made on Peach are the closest thing to the connections I created in the early years of my LiveJournal.
Personally, so much has changed: I was so excited and optimistic about the career I was embarking on and now I feel so burnt out. But as I write this, I am reminded to be grateful that I made something of myself and got out of my hometown. I embarked on not just a career but a whole new life in Pittsburgh that I love. I will always treasure the many entries in that first year or two that detailed all the adventures in moving to Pittsburgh and going to grad school.
20 years later I feel so tired but outside of work, I love my life. I just need to figure out the career stuff (or just stagnate and moulder in this job...I guess either one). Either way, I want to remain motivated and optimistic.
Yes, I still have my LiveJournal up on their site and have NOT deleted it like I said I would (probably should). While I have posted exclusively on Dreamwidth since March 2018, I did port over everything I had written on my LJ before then and consider my Dreamwidth journal a continuation of that LJ that I started...20 years ago??
I know the phrase has become cliche, but it's hard to believe it's been 20 years since I started this journal. At the same time it feels so long ago because my life was so much different back then. I was working at the public library in my hometown and was looking to apply to library school. For a long time, I used this LJ to meaningfully connect with my friends. We would write entries, sharing what was going on in our lives and we would respond to each other's posts with thoughtful comments. None of this "thumbs up" button...!
I really love having this Dreamwidth journal and continuing to write on it...even if it's very seldom. But honestly, with pretty much all my friends having long abandoned their journals, it's not the same. We have succumbed to the social media platform and trying to go against that is like trying to swim against a whitewater current. I have written about my frustrations with the Peach platform but at this point, the connections I've made on Peach are the closest thing to the connections I created in the early years of my LiveJournal.
Personally, so much has changed: I was so excited and optimistic about the career I was embarking on and now I feel so burnt out. But as I write this, I am reminded to be grateful that I made something of myself and got out of my hometown. I embarked on not just a career but a whole new life in Pittsburgh that I love. I will always treasure the many entries in that first year or two that detailed all the adventures in moving to Pittsburgh and going to grad school.
20 years later I feel so tired but outside of work, I love my life. I just need to figure out the career stuff (or just stagnate and moulder in this job...I guess either one). Either way, I want to remain motivated and optimistic.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-03 02:48 pm (UTC)Not sure how much you want to share about your work life in this forum but if you do want to vent about the sources of your burnout, or perhaps share your vision of what an ideal public library would look like, I'm definitely interested!
no subject
Date: 2025-09-04 02:32 am (UTC)I've used the icon, along with all the other ones you may see, since the very beginning! I believe I found it in a LiveJournal that had cheesy library-related memes. I thought the reference to the 80s song was so funny and clever. I think the icon represented how excited and optimistic I was about getting into the field of library science.
I work in an academic library cataloging books and also work with our catalog records on a batch/mass level. The job itself is not so bad, even if it does get tedious sometimes. I enjoy the challenge of solving problems, doing the detective work to create name headings/finding the correct record, and bringing together many different details to create a catalog record. What's burning me out is the "management" for lack of a better word...the "organizational culture" and the expectations they have for us as "faculty librarians." Being a faculty librarian has its privileges but also comes with expectations that are increasing even as our resources are decreasing and we keep getting spread thinner. Sometimes I wonder if becoming an academic librarian was a mistake. And as for the job itself, more and more responsibilities keep getting piled on me and any attempts to reduce my workload get shut down or made difficult. But I don't have to work weekends and the vacation time quite generous. Plus I can work from home part of the week. Plus you hear about how difficult it is to find a job nowadays and well, it makes me want to just hang on for dear life. But I don't know for how much longer I can do it. At this point, I don't think I would even look for another academic librarian job (if a librarian job at all) because it would be more of the same...