burnout

Reconsidering Rest: Interruptions and Invitations (Part 2)

Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Kaetrena Davis Kendrick, MSLS, Founder, Renewals.

(Activation notice: This post shares information about harmful workplace experiences and impacts on the body and may (re-)surface negative memories and/or associated emotions. Please take the time you need to move through this post at your capacity, and contact your healthcare team for support).

We’re continuing our reconsideration of rest practices, this time focusing on somatic interruptions to and reimagining rest invitations for harmed bodies. In Part 1, I explored causes of unrest and disconnections from rest for library workers. In this second part, we’ll look at how traumatized bodies respond to rest after long-term (and ongoing) exposure to harm, and I’ll highlight a trauma-informed framework to apply when considering established rest pathways. At the end of this blog, rather than a prescriptive approach to promoting rest pathways, I offer reflective questions about your experiences of rest and its connection to systems/policies – along with an invitation to a brief practice that gently increases your impressions of rest. I also hope the questions and practices spark reimagination of collective rest approaches in your workplace.

Interruption: The Traumatized Body’s Reaction to Rest

Traumatic experiences impact people despite their proximity to known harm and undermines their attempts to rest. Here are a few ways harm creates proximity-agnostic disconnections from rest practices.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Sufferers not only are subject to intrusive thoughts, but may internalize blame and shame as they remember their responses to harm (See Also, low-morale experience participant data). Comito’s Library Trauma Cycle highlights this blame cycle, implying internal messages and links to enacting harm on others. Additionally, PTSD criteria also include avoiding activities that may activate memories of trauma (think of all the activities we offer to library users!), sleep disturbance, and heightened startle responses.
Hyperviligance: a state of heightened emotional and somatic awareness despite absence of threats, hyperviligance is connected to PTSD, and is also associated with anxiety and depression (the most commonly reported mental health impacts of low-morale experiences). This state interrupts most standard rest practices as sufferers engage in second-guessing their decisions, avoiding conflict, catastrophizing, or rumination. Hyperviligance can also contribute to poorer quality of sleep as sufferers struggle to fall or stay asleep.
Cultural Message/Stereotype Reinforcement: people who identify or present as female, as well as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) are often tacitly encouraged and expected to ignore their bodies’ need for rest. From Working Mom/GirlBoss tropes and memes to the Strong Black Woman archetype, these reinforcements are activated outside of work and in employees’ personal lives, taking on additional nefariousness in the predominantly white and female LIS industry (See Also, Oppressed Group Behavior; See Also “Running the Gauntlet“).

Invitation: Collaborating With – Not Against – Rest

Polyvagal theory reveals inadvertent impacts of sudden exposure to rest and relaxation for hyperaroused bodies, and includes formal countermeasures for traumatized bodies to process and release energy stored in the body after adverse events (Somatic Experiencing International 2025). Nervous system regulation techniques like resourcing and titration may help harmed minds and bodies acclimate to intentional rest practices. I’ve invited Sarah Wallace, a Licensed Practicing Counselor, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and Founder of Blue Heron Counseling, LLC to share more. Listen in to hear her brief explanation of these techniques.

Invitation: A Framework to Consider

In addition to engaging in established rest practices, consider how they may be applied through a trauma-informed lens. The Wellness Wheel for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in LIS was created by Amanda Leftwich, founder of mindfulinlis, in 2018. The wheel counters conventional wellness models by considering the lived occupational wellness experiences of BIPOC library workers and offering somatic and system-interrupting responses to events that compromise worker well-being. See a fuller description – and examples – here (click the annotation icons).

Wellness Wheel for BIPOC in LIS — Reproduced with Permission. Image copyright ©2018 Amanda M. Leftwich.

Invitation: Holding Space to Practice

With love, bell hooks reminds us that healing is done in community – not alone. Therefore, in addition to sharing information about rest – and even in addition to presentations about how we have applied rest – we must also offer spaces for people to imagine, craft, engage, and be held accountable for protecting space(s) to and practices of rest. Tricia Hersey’s Nap Ministry collaborative sleep installations are an example of how these spaces can be made available. In libraries, we are aware of the need for these spaces; yet they are often reserved for people visiting the library. In the “back rooms” of our buildings, spaces for employees to rest and decompress are scant beyond a mandated milk expression room or institutional-feeling breakrooms. Invitations to share challenges and apply solutions are met with skepticism as worker recommendations fall into administrative, municipal, or political hinterlands. During the Pandemic, rest/restorative practice spaces were offered to BIPOC library workers, and Renewals offered its inaugural online practice and resonance community space in June 2025 (see the impact). More practice spaces are needed – and additional collaborations with counselors and therapists should be cultivated to increase somatic education and access to LIS practitioners. Whether you’re interested in practice, conversation, or both, here are some upcoming opportunities to engage:

The Reset Experience – mid-winter 2026 (Renewals, February 4, 2026)
Recharging in Challenging Times (American Library Association, February 10, 2026)

Invitation: Questions and an Activity to Inspire Space-making for (Collective) Rest Practice

What workplace supports (did you wish) were available to you when you began your rest practices? How did these supports (or the lack thereof) play out as you identified, advocated for, refined, or expanded your goals? Note which policies provided these supports (or note what policies are needed to offer the supports that did not materialize).
Try a practice that helps you gradually re-engage with rest sensations: Sarah Wallace expands on titration and offers a brief somatic practice.

Works Cited

Brewer, M. (2021). Strong Black woman archetype in organizational life. Dissertation. University of Kansas. https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/c2c43dbf-4358-439f-af0b-107e22c04c59/content

Cleveland Clinic. (2023, Nov. 16). Always on alert: causes and examples of hypervigilance. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/hypervigilance

Comito, L. (2022, Jul. 25). Library trauma cycle. Urban Librarians Unite. https://urbanlibrariansunite.org/library-trauma-cycle/

Dozier, D. (2025, May 2). Hypervigilance and sleep: Breaking the cycle of restlessness. Anchorage Sleep Center. https://info.ancsleep.com/blog/hypervigilance-and-sleep-breaking-the-cycle-of-restlessness

hooks, bell. (2018). All about love: New visions. New York: William Morrow.

Kendrick, K.D. (2019, Sep. 18). Considering: Oppressed group behavior. Renewals. https://renewalslis.com/considering-oppressed-group-behavior/

Kendrick, K.D., Leftwich, A.M., & Hodge, T. (2021). Providing care and community in times of crisis: The BIPOC in LIS Mental Health Summits. https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/25125

Kendrick, K.D. (2026, Feb. 6). PTSD in the low-morale experience. Renewals. https://renewalslis.com/ptsd-in-the-low-morale-experience/

Kendrick, K.D. (2018, Mar. 19). Running the guantlet: Lives of practicing minority academic librarians. The Ink On The Page. https://theinkonthepageblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/19/the-gauntlet-the-life-of-the-practicing-minority-academic-librarian/

Kendrick, K.D. (2025, July 15). Report: The (inaugural) Reset Experience. Renewals. https://renewalslis.com/report-the-reset-experience-june-2025/

Leftwich, A.M.(2018). Redefining the Wellness Wheel for librarians of color. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=pocinlis

(tenor. (n.d.). Working mom. https://tenor.com/search/working-mom-gifs

Somatic Experiencing International. (2025).Trauma and polyvagal theory – Stephen Porges and Peter Levine. https://traumahealing.org/product/trauma-and-polyvagal-theory-stephen-porges-peter-levine/

The Nap Ministry. (2018). Month: August 2018. https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/2018/08/

Reconsidering Rest: Interruptions and Invitations (Part 1)

Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Kaetrena Davis Kendrick, MSLS, Founder, Renewals.

In 2023, I shared a short Instagram reel promoting the seven kinds of rest, along with ways to engage in each. At the time, I’d just begun my intentional recovery after leading through and navigating a higher education landscape that was (and is still) grappling with how to center humanity and dignity and balance them with the expectations of capitalism. When I made that reel, I was very hopeful about ways I – and other library workers – could remix and apply these rest practices. A bit more than two years later, I am still identifying and refining my approaches. I recognize that while those established pathways are necessary, more context is needed, especially as we consider the interruptions to rest that workplace harm causes. This two-part blog will share an overview of invitations and interruptions to rest. Part 1 will explore causes of unrest and disconnections from rest; Part 2 will explore relationships between rest and trauma, recenter a recognized framework, and offer reflections inviting you to reimagine and cultivate collective rest approaches.

Interruption: States of Unrest in the LIS Industry

As library worker exposure to library values rejection, systemic harm, and compromised safety continue (and even while we try to protect targeted citizens in our communities), we need to revisit and to acknowledge the very real interruptions to rest practices – especially for truamatized workers and those with historically ignored identities. While established scholars writings on rest practices for these groups is available, the library and information science (LIS) industry continues leaning towards and normalizing passive-aggressive communication and resilience narratives. Consequently, we must recognize that pathways to rest may not be easy to access or practice, even if they are known. Low-morale experiences reveal that even when harm is not immediately present at work, harmed workers are actively anticipating harm. When they are not at work, they are thinking about the harm that may come to them when they return to the workplace. For BIPOC librarians navigating low-morale experiences, the threat of harm is so pervasive that active signals of rest are ignored due to their worries about being perceived as less-than-hardworking (See Also, Stereotype Threat). Acknowledging the spectrum of harm and how it presents, these interruptions have implications for not only for practicing rest, but for somatic awareness and activation when rest of any kind is attempted.

Interruption: Denying Rest in Library Workplaces

Exposure to long-term active and passive harm, vocational awe, and resilience narratives create internal narratives that cause overwork, heighten people-pleasing behaviors, and dampen intuition. If you tell yourself that the harm you’re experiencing “isn’t that bad;” if industrial values tell you to be “good,” but not to yourself; if you’re expected to produce and perform like others who may have more resources, it’s hard to think about boundaries, much less create ones that feel effective – and then build the strength to consistently apply them. There are more hurdles to clear as workers navigate questions about boundary-making – the first step to activating any of the rest types. We must recognize the internal narratives that tell traumatized library workers that they are not safe enough to consider rest practices and collaborate with workers to scaffold support and encouragement as they begin the non-linear journey of reconstitution and recovery.

Workers are often excluded or retaliated against when they engage in health-centered practices – even when they do so within the parameters of their workplace’s stated policies. Workplace wellness is a relatively new concept, and many organizations have policies that read as helpful, but are only tacitly so when applied. Moreover, many of the ways people care for themselves – within policies or informally – can be subverted or denied by authoritarian or toxic leaders and/or colleagues (and with deeper implications for identities who have been historically marginalized or ignored). Consider these examples:

The administrator who endures macro- or microaggressions after salat.
The worker who requests and receives an ergonomic personal work desk, and then is assigned to tasks requiring them to work away from that desk.
The employee who resists taking on extra shifts, and is summarily excluded from important meetings during their regular hours.
The worker who takes FMLA and whose position is phased out soon after they return to work.
The colleague who eats and takes a walk during their meal break – and is surveilled, harrassed, or guilted for not coming back early.
The manager who is told to not take “too long” of a vacation because they are the only ones responsible for their tasks.

Consider how myriad systems and behaviors – from funding to favoritism – may be leveraged by toxic employees or within a dysfunctional organization (or within a toxic department in a healthier organization) when an employee requests support for or engages in rest practices.

Another area that is implied with promoting these rest types is that rest can happen (more easily) when you’re away from the sites of unrest. But trauma doesn’t acknowledge where the body is now – it’s remembering that the body was threatened or was harmed, and is trying to signal to the body that it must maintain in a state of vigilance even if harm isn’t immediately present (traumatized bodies prep for the danger that could return at any moment, from anywhere). What happens when rest is introduced to the traumatized body after a long state of unrest?

In Part 2, we’ll consider this idea by exploring links to trauma and (un)rest. I’ll also reshare a useful framework and offer reflections that can help harmed and recovering library workers – as well as those who’d like to improve their organizations through reimagined and/or revisited policies and procedures – cultivate incremental, authentic, and trauma-informed routes to supporting and enacting rest practices. For now, here are two reflective questions to think about:

Invitation: Questions for Reflection

Which, if any, workplace behaviors or LIS industrial frameworks or expectations have interrupted your rest practice goals?
What external messages or social/ethnic/cultural/economic contexts come with these frameworks or your responses to these frameworks?

Works Cited

American Library Association. (1999 – 2025). Book ban data. https://www.ala.org/bbooks/book-ban-data

Berg, J., Galvan, S., & Tewell, E. (2018). Responding to and reimagining resilience in academic libraries. Journal of New Librarianship, 3(1),1-4. https://newlibs.org/index.php/jonl/article/view/805

Caldwell-Stone, D. (2025, Jan. 24). Libraries and immigration enforcement. Intellectual Freedom Blog. https://www.oif.ala.org/libraries-and-immigration-enforcement/

Ettarh, F. (2018, Jan. 10). Vocational awe and librarianship: The lies we tell ourselves. In the Library With the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Kendrick, K.D. (2017). The low morale experience of academic librarians: A phenomenological study. Journal of Library Administration, 57(8), 846-878 doi: 10.1080/01930826.2017.1368325

Kendrick, K.D. & Damasco, I.T. (2019). Low morale in ethnic and racial minority academic librarians: An experiential study. Library Trends, 68(3), 174-212. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/113621

Ko, M.E. (2017). Stereotype threat. https://ctl.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj17446/files/media/file/stereotype_threat_handout.pdf

Knox, K. (2024, Feb. 8). Protecting library workers: The ongoing battle for the health and safety of library staff. Public Libraries Online. https://publiclibrariesonline.org/2024/02/protecting-library-workers-the-ongoing-battle-for-the-health-and-safety-of-library-staff/

Miss Julie. (2025, Oct. 18). The call is coming from inside of the house. Hi, Miss Julie. https://himissjulie.com/2025/10/18/__trashed/

Reece, J. (2025, Nov. 15). Baltimore County reinstates 14 part-time librarians after abrupt mass firings. CBS News Baltimore. https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/part-time-librarians-fired-baltimore-county-public-library/

Another post on burnout, or A pep talk on cultivating an empathic attitude

I’ve been in this profession long enough to know that it’s often around this time of year that I usually start to feel really burnt out. Looking back through some of my old ACRLog posts, I found one from some time ago where I reflected on this very feeling…and tried to see past it. It makes sense that a transitional period or even a breaking point can follow the pace and workload of the ever-hectic academic year.

Of course, this wasn’t a typical academic year. The pandemic–and all its related professional and personal stressors and uncertainties–exacerbated the strains we all regularly endure. As a result, I think my sense of end-of-year burnout has been amplified, as well. I’m referring to the sense of fatigue, detachment, lack of motivation, and difficulty focusing that are typical hallmarks. But what strikes me most this time around relates to my capacity for empathy.

I’ve always considered myself an empathetic person. In recent months, though, I’ve been feeling that my capacity for empathy has diminished. I’m thinking that the course of the last year and a half has made me feel more emotionally strained and, therefore, more emotionally ungenerous or inflexible than I’ve felt in some time. Because I’m closer to my own limits, I feel more emotionally stingy with others.

I’ve generally taken pains to practice empathy and considered it to be a foundational characteristic of my personality and–in my professional sphere–my teaching, leadership, and managerial styles. Empathy fuels my interest in and perspectives on the world: it motivates me, facilitates effective communication, and strengthens collaboration. So to feel diminished in my capacity for empathy feels like a pretty big deal.

If you’re at all familiar with the research literature, media coverage, or even just the general conversation on burnout, you know that it can show up in different ways or arenas and that strategies to address it may vary accordingly. These range from creating space for breaks and reflection and practicing self-care and compassion to reducing workload and setting and maintaining boundaries and much more. Of course, individual strategies can only take us so far; organizational approaches are needed for wider cultural change.

While none of these strategies are a surprise, that doesn’t mean they’re easy to implement or sustain. So as I sit here at more or less the midpoint of the academic summer–lamenting how much of my “break” is already behind me, how much I have to accomplish, and how much of a real break I still need–I’m thinking about how to recharge, assert my agency, and affirm the meaning of my work again, like all the articles say to do. It’s here that I begin to wonder if my symptom might, in fact, also be my solution. Rather than waiting for the stars to align and my capacity to return to me fully restored, I’m thinking instead about how to pursue it–how to intentionally cultivate empathy, even in small ways, and reflect on the value it adds to my outlook, my work, my relationships. If I can re-frame it as a choice to make, a habit to practice, and an attitude to cultivate, then it becomes a path I can follow. Perhaps focusing my attention on taking steps to reclaim my capacity for empathy will be precisely the treatment I need to address my burnout.

How are y’all faring? How do you restore or maintain your capacities when burnout strikes? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Seven years later

Since 2008, ACRLog’s “First Year Academic Librarian (FYAL) Experience” series has annually featured 1-2 academic librarians in their first year on the job in an academic library. This new series, “Where Are They Now? Former FYALs Reflect,” features posts from past FYAL bloggers as they look back on their trajectories since their first year. This month, we welcome a post from Ian McCullough, Physical Sciences Librarian and Associate Professor of Bibliography at the University of Akron.

In 2012 I had the distinct pleasure of being a First Year Academic Librarian blogger for ACRLog. As part of this “where are they now” series, let’s talk about the years since I last blogged here.

One of the reasons I originally wanted to blog is I had absolutely no professional network as a new librarian. Librarianship was a second career and I worked in a lab while taking courses online at night. We had class meetups in Nashville, but the department was in Knoxville and things like collaboration, mentoring, and research opportunities were a step removed from campus. ACRLog got me the attention of people I still call friends. As a new and rootless academic librarian on the tenure trail, the blogging experience was incredibly helpful to me.

Since I stopped blogging in 2013, a lot of things have happened at University of Akron, many for the bad. Our enrollment has dropped by about 10,000 students total which caused predictable Survivor-style winnowing of the workforce via layoffs, not filling positions, and buyouts. There are about half the library faculty as when I arrived and a liaison system seems unrealistic given staffing levels that cannot support the number of subject librarians one would need to do the idea justice. I personally am liaison to nine departments, about 120 faculty and around 1,900 students. I remember being at a conference and someone saying they had 700 students they were liaison for and the room gasped. I was jealous.

I have had, as of now, five university presidents, three provosts, and two library deans. There were many retirements, one of which was my direct supervisor who retired at the end of 2015. I was asked if I would be interim head of the Science & Technology Library, which I agreed to and began in January 2016. A colleague who was more experienced turned down the opportunity, and I was the only other faculty in the branch at that moment. I took the job and had absolutely no reduction in my liaison librarian duties as physical sciences librarian.

I had more than five years of management experience going into the job, so the mechanical parts of management (budgeting and HR stuff) were pretty easy. But it was difficult to leave the faculty bargaining unit, my spot on Faculty Senate, and in general go over to “the other side”. I maintain that my most significant accomplishments as Interim head of the S&T Library are helping relocate the engineering tutoring program physically within the library and getting snack machines put outside the library entrance so students wouldn’t have to leave the building after hours for food. I believe students are more appreciative of the latter accomplishment. After a calm and relatively successful time in this position, another colleague left library management at University of Akron for library management at Harvard University – a career downgrade I still don’t understand. (Don’t send that email, it’s a joke.) Given the particular personal and professional dynamics of the workgroup, I was offered the opportunity to take over leadership of yet another unit. I accepted and became an assistant dean (“ass dean” of course) in December of 2017. If you are following along at home, this is lab rat to assistant dean in less than five and a half years. At the beginning of this position I had two staff, two contract professionals, and seven faculty librarians as direct reports.

When I took this new role, there was absolutely no reduction in my liaison librarian or interim department head duties. I was, quite simply, doing what had once been three jobs (actually more than three jobs, as the S&T Head had absorbed a third of a job before retirement). Also, I was on the tenure clock trying to produce an appropriate number of articles, presentations, and accomplishments in professional service to meet our promotion benchmarks. In this I was successful – I got tenure and promotion in July 2018. I would be curious to learn of other tenure track assistant deans who had the position without tenure yet. I gather it’s a very rare occurrence, but is also a sign of how much upheaval was happening at my place of work.

This is when burnout started to set in. I could do the job, or the three jobs, but I could not do the three jobs well. I was spinning plates, putting out fires, and other notable metaphors for spasmodic action. This period really sucked because working hard to be adequate is a poor trade. Department chairs had a group that met regularly and talked about common issues, not so with assistant deans. I felt my social world constrain at work, and being a manager is hard emotional labor. I learned about the fears, difficulties, illnesses, and family situations of my colleagues at a deeper level than I really wanted. Shouldering all that personal grief and pain for everyone was difficult, more so because the universe of people I could talk to about it was so, so small.

I also started having clashes with coworkers – sometimes about performance issues, sometimes about claims unbacked by facts, sometimes about the direction of the university and the library. It was honestly a miserable experience that I stayed in too long because of money (pro-tip – you make extra money in administration) and not wanting to abandon my dean who also has a huge workload. The final breaking point was an interim president seemingly hell-bent on making the worst decision possible, implemented and communicated in the worst and most aggressive way possible. I mulled it over for many months and asked to step down at the end of July 2019. When I told my wife about the decision, in part to apologize because we would be living leaner, she said, “Oh thank God.” The person who knows me best had been wishing for me to get out of the situation for months and was overjoyed.

The classic union song, “Which Side Are You On” was written by Florence Reece in 1931. My dad was an autoworker and union activist and I remember seeing Pete Seeger sing this evergreen tune live in Detroit. To say that unionism is part of my life is an understatement – it’s a bedrock element of my identity. Increasingly, while a dean, I felt that I was on the wrong side. The university response to economic crisis was, to me, authoritarian and inexplicable, explanations didn’t make sense and discussion was not welcome. The herky-jerky management led to a lot of wasted effort around the university as plans had to be discarded almost as fast as you could attempt implementation. If you do go into academic leadership, you are carrying water for the upper leadership and their decisions – you don’t get to hide when you disagree and leaving the position is the most honest thing you can do if you don’t like what’s happening. I think the only thing I really miss is the occasional (and very flattering) head hunter emails I used to get. Right after I left management, we hired a new university president who is, so far, “pinch yourself, am I dreaming” good. His wizardly move? Running the university like other institutions.

Since leaving management I have become union liaison for University Libraries and was then elected to the Akron-AAUP executive committee. Guess I just like being in the middle of things. I’ve been able to refocus on my librarianship, which I only had three years to figure out before taking on managerial duties, and reconnect with faculty friends. I’ve been able to refocus on previous projects I had to drop before – like learning more about data. I am happier and get more enjoyment from my job. Ultimately, my stint as an assistant dean didn’t suit my values and that internal conflict started leaking out in my disposition. I don’t think the state of Ohio or the university is well-served by eliminating traditional majors and steering students into class delivery modes, and possibly majors, they don’t really prefer. Right now there’s a risk of universities outsourcing their teaching to a cyborg nightmare of Pearson, Cengage, and Blackboard due to financial desperation. That is a future worth fighting against.

Which side are you on?

On the Mend: Falling Into and Out of Overwork

I’d meant to write this post earlier in the week. Actually I’d meant to write an entirely different post earlier in the week. But after weeks of avoiding the winter cold going around at the end of last semester, and weeks of colder than usual temperatures where I live, last week my time was up. I’m fortunate that I don’t tend to get sick all that often, and fortunate to have paid sick time, too. Which I needed last week for multiple days of bundling up in blankets with congestion, fever, coughing, and aches.

I’m mostly better this week though still playing catchup from having been out. So I want to write a bit about self care and overwork and libraries. We’ve written about the importance of self care on ACRLog in the past. Quetzalli’s post a couple of years ago highlighted both the need for self care and some of her own strategies. And Ian’s post from a bit earlier reminds us that just as we may be dealing with issues that are invisible from the outside, so too are other folks, and it’s important to practice self care and have a generous heart (a lovely term).

I am not always the best at self care. Historically, I’ve sometimes struggled to use my sick days (when I’ve had them) for anything but the very worst illness. Some of this is my own internal work mindset — I’ve worked in academia for a long time, and the siren song of just one more project/article to read/grant or conference to apply for can be tough for me to resist. I’ve tried to be much more intentional about self care in the past few years. Some of this is a natural side effect of getting older, but also because I do feel that self care is important for everyone, as much as I still sometimes struggle myself. I need to use my sick days when I’m sick, not only because it’s better for me to rest and recuperate (and keep my contagions to myself), but also because I want to be sure that my coworkers feel comfortable using their sick days, too. A sick boss is not the best boss, on multiple levels.

Last week Abby wrote about vocational awe and our professional identity as librarians, discussing Fobazi Ettarh’s terrific recent article in which she defines and explores vocational awe in libraries (a term she developed). Fobazi and Abby both point out that vocational awe can lead to overwork and burnout in libraries, and I agree. Vocational awe contributes to making it hard for me to use my sick days. I’m working on it. I’ve been thinking a bit about bibliographic emergencies — the library is not a hospital, and there are thankfully very few situations or issues that cannot wait while someone takes a sick day. Our work is important, but it’s also important to put our own masks on first before helping others.