Connecting Librarian

Its Day 19 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and today’s post is inspired by a special moment that happened on our drive home today.

I was just driving down our street with the kids, when I noticed a crow taking a bath in a deep mud puddle. He had his feathers fully spread and was immersing himself with great gusto, causing water and mud to fly everywhere. It was such a special moment, that we stopped in street to watch for a few minutes, then drove carefully past him. Despite our care, he edged away from the puddle, but by the time we had pulled into our driveway a few houses down, he was back again, so we watched a bit more.

Made me think about the special moments at work that help to make it the job that I love.  The ones I could think of immediately included:

• being able to fix what is wrong – whether it be an errant computer, photocopier or process that is not working the way it should
• being appreciated in general by word or by written comment, particularly the latter as most of the time our user comments are complaints of one form or another
• being able to help a library user find what they need when they haven’t been able to find it themselves
• watching our library users help each other, when we are too busy with the crowds to help them as quickly ourselves
• the laughs of the kids during our children’s events – like our forthcoming school holiday program
• and I admit it, I do experience some glee when I can thwart a library user who is being rude (and sometimes other behaviours), by unswervingly sticking to the rules

Unfortunately, quite often there is not enough time to stop and savour those moments, like we did today with the crow, but I’ll take them anyway.

There is much joy too, in the satisfaction that comes out of my job, but these are some of the special moments I enjoy. Would love to hear some of yours.

Its early Saturday morning and I missed posting this Friday night for Day 18 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge, because of the heading of this post.

My kids have been doing Auskick this year, for the first time. Originally it was for 8 year old son, but my nearly 11 year old daughter wanted to be a part, so she joined too.

Its 9 weeks in to the Auskick year and last night, my daughter played at the MCG as part of the half-time program. Being in Grade 5, she actually played in the club colours (she was a Bomber) and played across the centre of the MCG.

This all happened amazingly quickly.  Only a few shorts weeks after starting Auskick, kids and parents were asked for volunteers to participate in this game – requirements were minimal. My daughter immediately expressed interest and being a long time AFL fan, I was happy to agree.

She did not get many touches of the ball on the night, but her team did win their game, unlike the grown up Bombers on the night. And she walked away with an amazing set of memories, including running out onto the MCG in front of  a crowd of over 54,000 people (including several family members), winning the game, seeing the players close up as they returned to the ground after half-time and doing a hi-5 with spectators at the fence line as they moved round the boundary to exit the ground.

And all because she decided to try something new and put her hand up.

I try new things, but my daughter has inspired me to watch for other opportunities and to put my hand up. Who knows where it could lead.