It was bound to happen sooner or later.  Decades of hard work, a lifetime of passion, and years of education cannot be tamped down for long.  No matter the situation, the subject always seems to come up.  It is an inexorable force that exerts its energy on me regardless of time and place.

I simply must take a few minutes to extol the virtues of libraries.

I have spent my life as a passionate reader.  I first fell in love with libraries as a child, when every Wednesday was Library Day.  My mother would grab the bag of books I had devoured during the week prior, and we would set off on our ten-minute walk to what I could only think of as my own personal Wonderland.  To me, the library was a place full of endless possibilities.  The books contained therein could take me to anywhere in existence–not to mention the many places that do not exist except in the imagination.  Through those library books, I could meet people, visit places, and have experiences that would not be possible in the confines of my ordinary, if happy, life.

My wonder at the library did not diminish as I entered those rocky tween and teen years.  If anything, I became more infatuated with it as my opportunity to work as a volunteer in my school libraries–as well as my continued role as a voracious bookworm–offered me solace from the social perils of middle and high school.  I may have felt awkward everywhere else, but I knew what I was about in the library.  I may not have been in the popular clique in school, but I could still be prom queen through the books I read.

I eventually moved on to college and, despite having a much better time of it socially, continued my library work in UC Irvine’s Langson Library.  After that, it seemed to me that the next logical step was to get my Master of Library and Information Science degree.  That’s how in May 2011, I wound up becoming one of those official lovers of books, knowledge, and libraries: a librarian.

Although budget cuts and a poor economy have caused me to shift my career goals since then, my love of the library has never wavered for a moment.  Today’s libraries are an incredible place where information abounds.  They are a meeting place for beloved traditions and new technologies.  Here, e-books and physical books can live in harmony.  Here, computers are tools used to locate old microfilm records.  Here, there are resources both digital and physical available for use absolutely free of charge.  Here, any person can access any information in any format.  Nowhere else in the world is there such a place.

Now, shouldn’t we all be getting to the library?

Hello, and thanks for stopping by!  I’m starting this blog as a space to share my writing, editing, and general thoughts.  My Projects page holds some of my scholastic and professional work, and my blog posts are my musings on whatever part of life seems most interesting to me at any given moment.

Given that I am a newlywed, one of the topics foremost on my mind–more or less all the time these days–is marriage.  I have navigated successfully through the first 105 days of my marriage and have thoroughly enjoyed (almost) every minute of it.  My husband and I were delighted to learn that merging homes and lives was a relatively easy process; it turns out that we do very well living together.  I have started going to bed a little later, while he turns in a little bit earlier.  We get ready for work together and make dinner together in the evenings.  I dust the house, and he cleans the bathrooms.  We have managed to slide smoothly into a new pattern of living that meets both our needs and, even more than that, makes us happy.

So where, then, was the big period of change, growth, and learning I anticipated in the days leading up to our wedding?  I was braced for missing my single life, for struggling to adapt my schedule to fit his, even for many nights of poor sleep as I adjusted to having someone else in my bed.  None of that happened.  But in the past week, I had the stunning realization that I still had that period of change, growth, and learning…it just didn’t directly involve my marriage.

It turns out that marriage has shaped me as an individual in ways that I never even thought to expect.  Removed from the pressures that had dictated my life prior to marriage–the pressures of pleasing the many members of my family, getting through school, and planning the “perfect wedding”–I was suddenly able to get in touch with myself.  For the first time in my adult life, I began to consider who I really am and what I really want out of my personal and professional life.

My first realization came the morning after our wedding.  I had warned my husband that once we were married, he was going to have to start saving receipts so that I could check them against our credit card statements (a practice I’d been taught by my meticulously financially responsible mother).  He pointed out to me that we could just review our purchases online periodically and not have to save the receipts, but being an easygoing man, he good-naturedly agreed to humor me.  That morning, that first morning of wedded bliss, as we were walking the three miles from our hotel to the restaurant at which we wanted to have brunch, I suddenly realized that I didn’t feel a need to save receipts anymore.  If he could adopt my record-keeping habits, why couldn’t I adopt his?

Though it was an undoubtedly small change in the grand scheme of life, it felt hugely liberating to me.  That single change in my life opened me up to a personal growth I had never imagined.  I learned in little ways that I am not nearly as uptight and inflexible as I had once imagined.  I am capable of leaving dishes undone in the sink.  The house doesn’t have to look perfect all the time.  It’s okay to play days by ear and not have set schedules all, or even most, of the time.  I also came to larger realizations, such as my desire to explore a new career path, my need to let go of another career, and how much more like my laid-back father I am than I had known.

Some things remain the same, of course.  I still want to spend the rest of my life with the amazing man I married, and I would like to have a family with him at some point.  Reading and writing are still two of my favorite things to do, and eating ice cream can still soothe almost any frustration.  I still get up before the sun rises and exercise like a maniac every day.  But something fundamental has shifted in me, so that even doing these things that I have always done feel different.

Marriage is just as much an instrument of change as I had always believed it to be.  The surprise for me was that it was less a catalyst for change in my relationship and more a catalyst for change in myself.  Of course, it could be that in changing myself I have changed my relationship, too, and hopefully for the better.  I’ll have to ask my husband about that…