It’s March again. As wild as it seems, the normal lives that we were living a year ago have been completely altered by the pandemic. Let’s be real here, it’s been rough. The beginning was exhausting. trying to keep up with all the constant changes regarding COVID regulations, what was considered safe one week, then finding out a few days later that things had changed. The worry of people hoarding food and the fear of not being able to find groceries. Trying to figure out what would happen with working remotely and how to keep ourselves and the people around us safe.
Then mid-pandemic happened. Things were finally starting to get in the swing of things of what is the new normal and suddenly, BAM, we’re in South Texas hurricane season. The mental strain of dealing with prepping for what turned out to be a near miss on top of the pandemic was a lot. I turned to things to keep busy. I looked at other blogs like, “What’s on Emily’s Bookshelf?” which caused me to look reevaluate the amount of books that I have and think to myself “this can’t be the same brain that would pull all-nighters reading literary theory then continue to function the next day.” I saw that she had her books somewhat organized by section and decided to try and organize my bookshelves. Big mistake, huge. After making a bigger mess I bailed on that goal.
Now we’re in what I’m calling late-mid pandemic. I’m referring to it as that because if the last year has shown me anything, no one knows what’s happening. I’m slowly starting to become okay with the constant uncertainty (but I think that’s a conversation for later that dives into my need for structure). Texas is coming off of a wild winter storm that basically exposed every vulnerability to our infrastructure. I got unreasonably stressed about the storm and how to make sure that my house was prepared for it. On top of that stress, I have a newborn so I’m awake way too many hours a day and find myself looking for content to keep me awake while I’m pacing the kitchen trying to get the little one to burp. I found another blog called “You’ve watched all of Netflix……Now What?” where Rachel talks about how she’s run out of content for her son and turned to Kanopy to fill the need so she could get work done and her son could be entertained. Surely if it can keep the attention of a child, I would be set. I know it sounds terrible but I’m about to admit, I’ve worked here since before we had Kanopy and knew it was “great” but I had never used it. This platform is incredible. It has such a wide variety of topics that are even broken up into categories like Race, Ethnicity, & Identity, Gender Studies, Biographies. So many films documentaries that are different from me binge watching Schitt’s Creek and The Office on Netflix continuously.
If I’m being honest, I had no idea where this blog was going when I started writing it. I honestly, still am not sure what it has turned out to be other than the realization that any time I get stressed, I was able to turn to content of the Library Blog to provide me with a distraction. There are so many different people sharing information that gives a glimpse into what they do here in the library, projects that they are working on, or just sharing their interests. I’m sure as I continue navigating through these unprecedented life events, I’ll be turning to the blog to find more things to distract myself with.
