Fruit From My Hands

I’m a 50-something that was born halfway between the Baby Boomers and the Generation X-ers.  I lead two distinctly different lives.  One life is firmly rooted in creating and crafting with my hands while the other is equally as rooted in a professional life that manages technology and information resources in an academic library.  Caught between two very different generations and two very different worlds, I am ready to try melding them together in the hopes of becoming an even better whole person living one complete well-rounded, skilled, knowledgeable life and ending the the duality that has been my existence for too many years. I’m afraid I tire of the effort of keeping them separate.  It has finally occurred to me that I am not required to keep them separate and that by combining them I could finally give in to what has been happening naturally for some time.

I have an insatiable need to understand how things are made and how they function.  I can stare at things for hours trying to understand exactly how things work.  I am constantly discovering new skills that I feel compelled to acquire and new techniques I need to master all the while adding my own unique flair.  This curiosity holds true in both my professional and person lives.  Over my lifetime, none of my hobbies were popular among my peers.  I was sewing doll clothes when others my age were learning makeup techniques; learning to knit while others were playing video games and drafting and flower arranging while they were rushing sororities and going to parties.

I work in technology as a profession.  I administrate servers, monitor systems, manage data, create graphics, and develop web resources in the library world.  I’ve written complicated reports, manipulated copious amounts of data and written numerous procedures, manuals, blog posts and emails.  I’ve even managed social media and dabbled in marketing.  I do all of this for an hourly wage, benefits and the hope of doing something to contribute to the young minds of tomorrow.  So why can’t I use all of these skills along with my creativity to become a “complete package”?

So, here we go………