My library card: a rant

December 28, 2009 by 4 Comments

I guess we all have our crosses to bear in life, but mine seems to be this: freaky technical/administrative glitches that turn something that works *effortlessly* for other people into an anxiety nightmare for me. Example: my birthdate, which is listed correctly on both my birth certificate and marriage license, but was entered incorrectly by someone at the social security office when I got married and changed my name—a problem caused on *their* end—which they refuse to fix unless I take those documents (the same ones they were sent when I applied for a new card) in person to the social security office somewhere in Springfield.

The most recent example of this is my newly acquired library card. Yes, I’m embarrassed to say, I *just* got a library card here in town, though I’ve lived here since late 2000. I applied for my card one evening a month or so ago without a hitch, but when I tried later to create a login for the library system’s online reservation service, it did not recognize my card number. I tried again over the course of several days, both from my home computer and from work. Eventually, I dragged myself back in to the library to see what was up, and weirdly, the card registered just fine on the library’s own computers. Elated to have fixed the problem, I gleefully logged in later that night from home, only to encounter the same problem as before.

Since then, I’ve e-mailed the library for help. A very nice woman deleted my PIN number, certain that the problem was an incorrectly entered PIN, but of course that *isn’t* the problem (the system does not recognize my number, PIN or no PIN) so that didn’t help at all. My husband is able to log in with his card from home without a problem. Our friend who visits the house is able to log on. It’s not our ISP, it’s not my browser, it’s not anything I can possibly control from here. Now I’m waiting for some other response from the library, but by now the situation has cranked my social anxiety level up to about 100 (out of 10) and I’m feeling so frustrated, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to force myself to use the library again. My heart cries out, “WHY? Why does this always happen to ME?” with a level of frustration wholly inappropriate to the situation, yet I find myself honestly close to tears.

I’m hoping that by letting this rant out into cyberspace, I might somehow be freed of this intense frustration that is truly ruining my day. I hope?

ETA: IT’S FIXED, IT’S FIXED! THE LIBRARY CAME THROUGH! OH HAPPINESS AND JOY!

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Snowstorm Fail & Holiday Mehs

December 20, 2009 by 10 Comments

It wouldn’t be quite right to say that I have the Holiday Blues. I don’t feel quite “blue”… closer to “meh.” So I suppose I have the Holiday Mehs. Work is overwhelming right now, to the point where I have had to cancel most of my vacation days over the next two weeks just to get things done, so I’m missing that giddy vacation feeling. Meanwhile, with so much uncertainty in our lives right now, we decided not to have a Christmas tree this year, so it’s easy to forget that the holidays are even happening.

I’m big on Christmas usually, not so much in the Santa “ho ho ho” way and certainly not in a religious way, but there’s a very special kind of joy for me in warm people, beautiful music, and pretty lights that makes me treasure this time of year. Usually. I guess I’m just not feeling it this year and I have this horrible fear that somehow it might be dead for me forever. I hope not. I don’t know. Maybe I expect too much from adult life.

Perhaps more irksome than all of this is that the stress of work and everything else has killed my ability to focus on the work I want to be doing most. The last week has been appallingly unproductive and I fear there’s more of that to come.

In better news, The Blizzard of 2009 barely touched us here in western MA which means little to no snow shoveling! This probably seems like a small blessing, but honestly it feels huge. Thank you, weather!

Let’s hope I can catch some holiday cheer over the next few days. Got any to spare?

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