B.

snippets of study dates these past few days and stuff in my room (dead flowers from v’s day and my favorite part of my moodboard)

I really have been trying to get back on track but yesterday ended up being a hard day. It’s easy to fall back into old habits, even if they’re not great, and it seems i wasn’t strong enough. However, I’m trying to understand myself. Yesterday was Monday. I had too much work to start the week. I don’t think I was prepared and got overwhelmed. I must pause, feel it, learn from it and keep going.

If you can buy the books, do. Whether you can buy the books or not, borrow them from your library.

Borrow the paper versions. Borrow the ebook or audiobook versions. Request the titles you want that your library doesn't have. The more a title circulates or is requested, the better librarians are going to be able to defend keeping it if and when it's ever challenged.

Use libraries like @queerliblib too. The more members they have, the better they'll be able to fundraise.

Your community resources depend on you using them. Borrow the books before they go away.

InB4: Piracy is not the solution here. We're trying to keep community resources available, not make sure individual people can read individual books. Different problems.

Libraries and librarians are going to be under attack in the coming years.

Please help us by showing the people in charge that these materials are important in the only way they really understand - the number of checkouts.

Libraries are mentioned on page one of Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership (the big book of horrible policy plans). Choosing not to reauthorize the IMLS will be an easy way for the incoming administration to gut library services nationwide, especially in small communities that don't have a thriving donor base to fill those budget gaps. They'll be able to stop the "porn peddlers" and "groomers" at the cost of vital services to those communities.

One of the best tools we have to try and avoid that outcome is to prove, definitively, that libraries matter by presenting robust use statistics. Checking out books, using library spaces, attending library programs, all of that gets captured and reported to the IMLS each year. They're imperfect measures of the value the library provides to the community, but they're what we have.

At the local level it's going to be just as, if not more important to educate the community about what the library does. Your local governing authorities aren't going to be persuaded by the librarian alone, but they can be persuaded by vocal community support. That will also inoculate your community against "grassroots" attempts to shut the library down, like almost happened in Dayton, Washington in 2023.

14.10.2024: Last week I received an email that said a mandatory meeting would take place today, before the academic year starts next week. I got the cheapest train tickets I could find, which meant staying for an entire day at this city previously unknown to me with nothing else to do other than the meeting.

I couldn’t get any sleep last night, thinking about this new beginning for me, and going there alone for the first time, discovering the city on my own... I really disliked my previous college town, and I felt like a fish out of water there (which is funny because it was a coastal town). I constantly felt nostalgic for that city in the mountains where I first went to college.

This morning, when the train was arriving at my destination I started to understand what my mom (she visited this place last year) meant yesterday when she kept saying that I would like being here. This city presents itself to me like a beautiful, never-ending opportunity to explore, which is what I love the most about big cities. I keep asking myself, what have I done to deserve all this beauty? what am I going to do with all of it?