Friday Writing Essential: My Dream Career

My favorite place is the library. Sunny, rainy, snowy, whenever. At a very young age, my first glance inside the town's wondrous library had me clearing the window's frost away on a cold early morning and imagining the books were my friends. The authors were writing their stories exclusively for me. As soon as those front doors opened, there I was in safe-land, reading how shiny knights and handsome princes were on a mission to save me.

When asked the question, "What do you want to do in your career as an adult?" My answer: A librarian.

Continuing on with juinor high, I found the few books which were not registered on the school library alarm system, then collected my favorites and made my escape. Only moments later, the Gods (librarian, principal) pinged my fear, and I begrudgingly returned them.

In my particular high school, hanging out at the library was considered 'uncouth'. So I immediately made a decision to graduate in January instead of June of my senior year. Upon graduation, I met with my military recruiter at the base library and was promised a reserve slot and employment at the juinor college library. The deal was on, although the catch was having to enroll in a specific amount of units, so I became interested in photography while adding the G.E. courses. The landscape photography that I was doing wasn't going to  magically make me an Ansel Adams, so I opted for the photojournalism A.S.  Both during class and after, I kept hearing this class peer of mine talking about his work as a stringer with the local daily paper. My ears started buzzing. I gathered my equipment and plotted my plan. I went to the Friday night game and strategically stood right in front of the sports editor and pretended that I was a photographer. He approached me and asked, "so what paper are you with?" Then after hearing my answer he basically hired me on the spot (really after an interview) as a stringer. Alas, I started noticing the reporters outnumbered us photographers and gave into the print journalism option.

After tranferring my units and graduating, my internship from a small town newspaper led to a job as their "creative nonfiction writer." After one year though, the paper that had maintained its standing for a few years and was owned by the local daily had folded. Luckily, I found part-time employment as a library circulation assistant, where I remain until this very day.