Argh. I’ve been trying to get a casual or contract role in a library since late last year but to no avail. The roles I’m going for are helping customers with finding books; returning books to shelves and general admin roles.

Today I received yet another rejection.

Luckily, some time ago I had spoken with a librarian who went through my resume with me in detail and explained how I could improve it. For such a role, they focus more on customer service and community service and although I have lots of experience in the latter, I have relatively little in the former. I’ve had to think about all those odd jobs I used to do in-between my “professional” work or do during my holidays when I was younger and bring those out into my CV although they were done over 20 years ago.

My professional roles are all irrelevant and indeed, never even asked about. It’s a real eye opener when you’re entire professional life of near 24 years is discounted. No one really cares about social learning, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, communities or learning design.

It makes me wonder at times what it was all for? 🤔

Anyway, I now have a CV I can continue to use but it’s now time to hide my LinkedIn profile once again until I apply for my next library role. I only make the LinkedIn account live when I’m job hunting. The rest of the time, it feels like an ancient relic of my past. A past that seems so long ago and completely irrelevant and useless to me now. I still feel like I’m in some liminal space – a bit directionless at the moment as I contemplate that I should just consider myself “retired” and be done with it. Or get comfortable in the fact that I need to redefine my whole life now and create something new with all these long stretches of time I have in front of me.

I did see a local supermarket was asking for retail assistants. This supermarket employs older women and they provide training. I can do this but I still prefer to work with books. 🤣 Of course there’s absolutely no chance of me going back to a corporate or business role. My last role killed every joyful feeling I had about my work in the online community space that I’ll never, ever, return to that again.