Short answer – mental health and self love

Longer answer – I need to take a day off and show myself some quiet love to be a healthier person. The fact that I feel the need to justify it, is part of the problem.

Self-esteem issues aside (or connected), I don’t want to go into work today because I have been feeling very much undervalued there.

I had a spat with my supervisor about the dates I requested for my bereavement leave. Instead of just replying yes or of course, she asked if there was any flexibility to my dates. We had a conversation the previous week about me needing to check with my mom about when she was planning to take my dad’s ashes to the cemetery. I get that she’s under a lot of stress as well, but I didn’t think she needed to know the details of how I was going to use the leave when I requested the dates off. And I felt that her response to me was very different than her responses had been to other people I had witnessed in the past.

But that was last week.

Yesterday, I had a virtual meeting with a planning team and some library administrators about our library’s upcoming expansion. It started off with a library administrator checking in and explaining that she was turning her camera off because she was driving. I guess she didn’t want to be late to the meeting, but really? Participating in a virtual meeting while on the way to work? How do you explain that to risk management if there’s an accident?

Then when it was my turn to talk (and it took a good long time to get my turn) and I mentioned what I would like to see in the storytime work area, things went south for me quick. One of the non-perks of being a children’s librarian is bringing all of the soft toys used during storytime (especially baby storytime) home to wash them on a regular basis.It is a hidden labor cost. As in, I make even less money when I bring home county owned items and wash them on my so called “free” time using my soap and water I get billed for.

It seems like a reasonable request for all new buildings (and those getting renovated) to come standard with a washer and dryer and a good sized sink for cleaning purposes. Just because it hasn’t been done previously doesn’t mean it can’t be. The planners thought that because it was a commercial building that would make it not feasible. But even as the male planners were trying to brainstorm a work-around, the female library administrator (who had managed to get to her computer without crashing) was shaking her head no.

This is systemic and structural sexism in action and to see it so blatantly displayed in my work place is one more huge disappointment in my life right now. Forget how disappointing it is to be American right now – with our so called “leaders” allowing their citizens to die by the hundreds of thousands… I would love to see women supporting women right now by trying to change women run industries for the better. It is no secret that the library profession is predominately female.

As a single parent, weekends are not “free” time. They are catch up on housework time and plan for next week time. There can be a few hours of fun here and there, but some weekends include lots of tasks that need to get done. That leaves very little time for recharging. Women around the country are in similar boats, even when they are in a relationship. I am getting really sick of being an underpaid, undervalued employee and the only way I can see out of it is to start my own business.

Seeing that shaking head was just one more nudge. And then the library and the community will lose an excellent children’s librarian because they can’t see the forward thinking individual (that they claim to want) when she is sitting right in front of them.

I just wish I knew what kind of business I should start.

And then the other thing that happened yesterday was getting an email from my HR department that my FMLA leave was ending at the end of the month. And I had just jumped through all the hoops and gotten an email saying I had been approved until the end of the year a couple of weeks ago. When I responded with an attachment of the email I had received, it was quickly cleared up. The error was due to a miscommunication in the HR department. It was good news, but I still lost it for a few minutes and had to go outside to cry in the shade of a mesquite tree for a bit.

And of course after a day like that, there is always some big behavioral challenge with my son that I have to deal with. That encounter, at least, resolved in a positive way, but it took a hell of a lot of effort on my part.

I honor myself today by taking the day off.