Cuz I’m Not Cool Enough to Be a Geek

I have had an unhealthy love affair with the written word for as long as I can remember.  If you left me alone in a room with a can of bug spray, I’d read every word on that can over and over again.  Then I would probably imagine how I would have written it and start dreaming up designs for it.  Hey, I’m not proud.  It is what it is.   Besides, I inherited this sickness from my mother.  She’s a total book dork too.  Truthfully, all of the women in my family are and that is just fine by us because honestly, how else are we going to explore the world?  

So I’ll admit, it certainly isn’t a glamorous life.  Did you know NO ONE will pay you just to read and pet the cat?  Honestly what is the world coming to???  :)

Anyway, after six years in the book retail biz (not as interesting as it sounds… really… it is a lot of, “um, it was pink and there was a shoe on it.”), I jumped ship and found that all retail pretty much sucks.  So now I’m committing myself to book dorkdom full time by getting my Masters in Information and Library Science.  I mean, if you’re going to be a dork, why not be the best?  Mom is super proud, of course.  And sure, I know it will be more of the same (“my kid has to read one of these books over the summer for school and I don’t want to listen to him whine so which one of these is the shortest and also has cliff notes or an audio book?”), but at least it won’t be the soul-sucking madness of retail (AKA More Money Buy More Junk).  Though my focus is on YA lit, I still love to read anything that I find floating around.  

I have a YA blog (see vagabondia.wordpress.com) so I thought I would add a sister site for the more mature set.  So why dowdy?  Well, I had this manager at the bookstore who called me dour one day.  He’s right, of course, but that’s not the point.  The point is, I thought he said dowdy.  And it stuck.  Heck, I’m no beauty queen and fading into the shadows suits me.   A t-shirt and jeans is about as dressed up as I’m likely to be on any given day and it my hair isn’t in a pony tail, it means I got hot and shoved it into a bun.  So while the new generation of librarians are proud to be bold and new and defy all of the stereotypes, a part of me is content just to… well…. be.  

So here I am, embracing the inner book dork inside and the dowdy exterior as well.  Join me and let your freak flag fly!

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