I haven't been writing about myself much. Mostly because my head is too full of thoughts to find room to put enough stuff together to make it worth writing a post.
This is the problem with the work I'm doing at the museum. Every piece of paper I handle is potentially new information. Everything interests me. I flit from pretty-shiny to another. A lot of it is routine -- coronations and funerals for a string of monarchs generate piles of ephemera, programmes for theatre, ballets, school presentations, fundraising balls, tickets and invitations to every sort of event you can think of. All marked on the spreadsheet and put back into the box. A programme for a Citizen Inauguration Ceremony almost got a similar dismissal until I noticed the time. Events (including a ball and firing of cannons) ran from about 10 pm on 31 December 1900 until late morning on 1 January 1901. Hmm. One rather big inauguration ceremony.
A lot of stuff on trains, of course. (The site is the former railway workshops.) Steam trains, accidents, fares & timetable, instruction booklets. The centenary in 1971 was obviously a big deal. (Would they have believed that just 7 years later, the passenger train service would be shut down.) Just before I burnt my hand on Tuesday, I'd started on religion. A page from Hobart Town Gazette detailed subscribers towards the construction of a Presbyterian place of worship and a Wesleyan chapel. Other papers on a similar theme. I think it's interesting because it's about the early cultural development in Tasmania, but really, it's about the development of religion in Australia. This is just 35 years after Europeans first dropped on the shores with their strange ideas about how the world works. It's too easy to look at these things from a modern perspective
Good thing about going to school is school holidays. Although I think this is because you need them. Just finished a 5 week unit "Assist with circulation services" i.e. working at the circulation desk in the library, and today was assessment day! Of course, while I'm being watched, the first two check-ins were complicated (one guy had renewals (overdue) + some to take out). The sort of things that are fine if you have a chance to think about it, but provide opportunities to mess up while being watched. Also a hold came in, so I had to *shudder* ring up the user to tell her. *sigh* But it seems I did really well. (And I'm good at "my numbers")
So that unit is done, and there's two weeks of holidays. So I can de-stress. This week has been particularly hard. Another unit is about customer service and dealing with conflict, and the assessment involves roleplays. I can't do this. This is not, "I find it uncomfortable to do this" but "I can't do this". I'm not sure the teacher really understands this. I've told him. I think he thinks that when it comes to do it, I'll manage. So this is causing some stress :(
Week after next, is our Melbourne trip (thanks to sister, who had frequent flyer points to use up). I haven't decided what I'm going to do. There are plenty of things I could do, but nothing that makes me go "Yes! I want to do that!". Every trip should have something you're particularly looking forward to doing. So this is a bit of a bummer.
Not writing now, which is also a bit of a bummer. Top Secret NF Project has decided it is silly and therefore not to be worked on. I'll turn up the heat under it and leave it until it comes back to the boil.
Also trying to ignore the voice that points out that giving up on a book before it's even been submitted anywhere is stupid.
Finding it hard to get into reading properly. When I find a book that interest me, it's easy to read. But little seems to interest me. There are too many boring books in the world. Oh well.
