Teddy Bear

I read today about paramedic Phil Bell, who is in preparation for the Victoria's Strongest Man competition. Bell had an interesting comment about his profession:

> "I think a trap that a lot of people fall into is that the ambo job becomes their identity in their life."

He was clear that he identifies as a "strongman", who happens to earn his living by doing paramedic work. I couldn't help but think of my own profession as a librarian. The identification with the role is such a significant part of the profession that we now – thanks to Fobazi Ettarh – speak of "vocational awe". I've attempted, with reasonable success I think, to escape this trap. I'm lucky to be in a position where I can work a four day week, and people are often confounded by the idea. "What do you do on your day off?" they ask. I'm never quite sure how to answer this. It's not like I have a "second job" I'm doing, it feels like saying "wow you take every weekend off? What do you do with all that time?" On the other hand, I do sometimes struggle to balance in my head what it is that I _want_ to be doing with my extra day of leisure. Sometimes I feel compelled to read up on topics to do with libraries, and then I worry that I'm doing it wrong: "they're not even paying me right now!"

More recently, I made a replacement web app for my blog aggregator, to incorporate more means of professional communication. I started doing this because I figued it would be easier to maintain if I just rewrote the whole thing to use Django (even though I've read "Kill it with fire" and know I'm not really supposed to do that). But I also want to encourage a rich professional culture of blogging, newsletters, discussion, and all of this using open and proven technologies like RSS/Atom. The irony is similar to the time I spend contributing to the BookWyrm project: I "haven't had time" to read many books, or write much in the way of blogs or gemposts. I keep delaying my 2024 return to my weekly links newsletter with feeble excuses: the reality is I just haven't read much to share.

All of which is to say I feel a little hypocritical when I constantly tell people to "get a blog". On the other hand, the whole point of separating your whole self from what you do for a living wage is to be able to do more things just because. I guess you can never take the guilt out of an ex-Catholic.

Gippsland's 'Teddy Bear' paramedic in training for Victoria's Strongest Man competition

Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves

Aus GLAMR

Kill it with fire