Greetings all - it has been a long time and there are many reasons for that.

It has been a challenging summer - busy and frustrating. Thank goodness for friends and other supporters.

To begin with - Cheers to a friend and former colleague at the FDIC Library who retired in June. Noreen Lewis was always friendly and helpful when I first started there 26 years ago. She trained me on many duties and alerted me to any problems. She was always at work early in the morning when things were quiet. Noreen is a somewhat typical librarian in that she is quiet and a little shy. But there was never any doubt that she knew her job!

When I returned to the FDIC Library as a Cataloger she reviewed my work until she was satisfied that I knew what I was doing and that the integrity of the collection was not going to suffer because of my carelessness or lack of diligence. I sort of enjoyed cataloging - though it is a bit mind-numbing. My congrats to all those Catalogers who do their jobs well.

At one point in her career Noreen was diagnosed with cancer and had to suffer through surgery and chemo and radiation. She was able to work from home and she was every bit as productive then as the days she came in to work. Noreen has a quiet sense of humor and is able to laugh - and that is a good quality in everyone. Noreen didn’t play the tragic victim of cancer, but she didn’t laugh that ordeal off. Once I asked if there was anything I could do. She asked if I could get the radiation for her - because it hurts - like a sunburn and then you have to go back again, and again, again. “ouch,” I said.

I wish Noreen a long, happy and healthy retirement! Thank you for being so patient with me all those years ago.

Confluence and Serendipity

In the past month or so I have been getting signals - subtle and direct - that have encouraged me to focus more positively on my life and work goals.

My sister, Teresa, has talked about a book titled The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. It is a new age, self-help book and it has some pretty good, common sense ideas about life in general.

My partner was talking about positive and negative energies and I asked him about that. He said you always want to focus on positive energies. If someone doesn’t have anything positive to come out - that’s not your problem - but you don’t want to focus on negative energies.

And I take all that and look it in terms of my own set of beliefs and call on the power of prayer. I focus my energies and say a prayer to my guardian angel as well as to those of others and call on good things for them and me and good things from this encounter.

This is great - and I’m feeling better and things are going better professionally. Yea! I was looking through the latest Information Outlook from SLA and there’s a really good article by Marshall Brown titled - Getting What You Want to Come to You. (You may need to be a member of SLA in order to read the article.)

In the article Mr. Brown talks about much of the same thing - keep a positive perspective. He talks about two workers - one who works with ease and is successful, the other who labors hard with barely adequate results. The first is floating on the river, the second is slogging through the mud. What’s the difference?

Hint: It”s in the river image. When Paul works hard, it doesn”t feel like a struggle–he”s “in the flow.” He”s in tune with his life purpose, his passions, and his vision for himself and the work he does in the world. As a consequence, he”s just naturally able to attract what he wants, with enviable ease.

Read the article - it is good. I will continue to approach my life and my career in a positive manner. It is always a shame that we have to struggle sometimes in order to appreciate things. The important thing is to learn the lesson and keep thinking positive. Interesting how all this came about at once - and I started re-reading some Joseph Campbell too.