Opening up

Molly.com is a blog I read on a regular basis mainly for Molly’s insights on Web design. (She’s one of those ‘famous’ Internet folks.) Well, I suddenly feel odd about labeling her as ‘famous’ due to one of today’s posts the small price of fame. This one really got me thinking about me.

I’m not saying I’m famous in the least but people in the library world, especially in the BCR region, know my name. I’ve not bothered counting the number of times I’ve heard “Oh yeah, I’ve seen your name. Can I ask you a question?” which like Molly’s description is followed by something computer related. Now, this hasn’t happened in the dentist or doctor office and usually occurs in a library and/or computer related environment but it still gets frustrating.

I was talking to my friend Barbara mid last year commenting on how, even though I meet hundreds of new people a year (maybe even more than a thousand in some cases) I still end up back in a hotel room at the end of the night. While on the road I usually end up having lunch with a new group of interesting individuals each day, but we usually end up talking about libraries and/or computers.

On a trip last Fall I ended up being invited to the house of one of the campus librarians (who was not attending any of my classes) who was a big jazz fan. We ended up having a wonderful meal cooked by his wife and listened to old jazz albums. (Yes, on vinyl!) No shop talk at all. He used to travel a lot himself and remembered how wonderful it was to be invited to someone’s house for dinner. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that it was the first time in my more than six years of traveling that it had happened to me but I made it clear that I’d enjoyed myself immensely

I’m not trying to convince you that I’m lonely. I have my friends and they’re all very special to me. I keep myself busy and I’m not unhappy living alone. Sometimes it just seems that even if you’re surrounded by people you can still feel isolated.