An Update from the Heartland

In hindsight, the need for a vacation was glaringly obvious to probably everyone but me.

Sure, I've had some time off over the past year. A long weekend in Flagstaff--surrounded by a group of people. A week on a cruise ship--also surrounded by people, and also maybe scabies. A week in Florida at Christmas--to mourn my recently-deceased mother and try to help put her affairs in order.

None of these were particularly relaxing or restoring trips or retreats. Given the fact that I'm a abit of a weirdo, one could almost say that these "vacations" almost added to the queue of stressors  in my life. And then, factoring in staffing shortages and the BFD Writers Event and my own expectations and neuroses and guilt and repressed grief and occasional feelings that holy fuck, nothing will ever change, ever...by the end of February, I was beginning to see what the end of my rope looked like. And you know what? It looked like me. Frayed. Worn out. Not good for much.

My bosses saw it. My husband saw it. My colleagues saw it. I know I saw it too, but I didn't feel able to do much, because after all, a real vacation was coming up. Two weeks in Indiana, and Ohio, and Michigan, visiting friends old and new, family known and unknown, and going to a big Library Conference. It hasn't been tropics, or the streets of Paris, or majestic mountains. I didn't want that, at least not this time.

It's been rolling hills and flat fields and winter-blighted grass and bare trees and a bunch of really damned friendly people (overwhelmingly, self-consciously white, alas, but it is Middle America, and many really, really try to find the little diversity there is and celebrate it) and old houses and suburbia and hospitality and really, really bad sushi and really, really good pork tenderloin sandwiches and steaks. It's been about family and family history. It's been about seeing where my mother and grandparents come from, and seeing how much, yet how little, everything changes in the Heartland of America.

And that was just the first week.

Now, after a week from bouncing from Bloomington to Noblesville to Tipton to Mount Pleasant, Michigan to Dayton, Ohio, and then back to Indiana, I am settled for the next several days here at a hotel in Indy. I'm on the 19th floor, and the view at my window isn't that different from the view I remember at the Winterhouse Apartments, Summer of 2005. Same flat horizon, stretching on for miles, offering a view of just about everything in what feels like a 50-mile-radius. Some people would find this boring, when compared with the expanse of the ocean or the towering cliffs of the mountains--but not me. What's not fascinating about this view of buildings and land, people and trees, all of it part of this simple, quiet state?

But while the last week has been about looking back, about personal connections and mental/spiritual restoration, the next week is about looking forward, committing to professional restoration and recuperation. Tomorrow morning, the "preconferences" of PLA commence,  and it's time to get my librarian on again.

This time in 2004, I was preparing to move to Indiana and begin Library School. Now it's ten years later and I am a librarian, returning to Indiana and in a way, continuing my education. This is merely one chapter in the continuing (and admittedly, rather boring to anyone who isn't me) saga of my life, but it's one that I intend to have a helluva good time writing.