A recent Democracy Now! segment featured an excellent discussion of the fall of daily newspapers. The first half of the discussion was about new business models that don't rely on advertisements, perhaps sponsered by grants or public funds. There weren't many details, but I found the discussion interesting. It would probably be good if media conglomerates start selling off their holdings, and perhaps those fired journalists and editors will start their own, less compromised projects.

Near the end came a discussion about the difference between newspapers and the internet, and why the internet cannot replace print. "The average reader of the paper copy of the New York Times spends forty-five minutes reading the paper. The average viewer of the New York Times website spends about seven minutes." That was Chris Hedges, senior fellow at the Nation Institute and a former correspondent for the New York Times.

And thenLinda Jue, director of New Voices in Independent Journalism: "... what I’m slowly coming around to is understanding that, yes, the internet does not—is not a good medium for delivering long-form, in-depth reporting. And I don’t think that we should try to, you know, plug a square peg into a round hole that way. But I think that, realistically, we have to look at ways to generate attention, to use the internet to drive attention to longer-form reporting that can be found elsewhere, including print."

The whole discussion took the issues a little further than I've seen it anywhere else, and I've been looking at the issue pretty closely for months now.

What would I be doing if I wasn't at work right now? I don't even know any more. Periodically it occurs to me how strange it is that I'm "at work", doing nothing. It strikes me differently each time. Today, I realize how totally it affects my life, how I can't say what would be different if I didn't have to work. Would I have greater ambitions? Would I be content to sleep until early afternoon, and then read the newspaper or novels, like I was during summers and on my year off, before I graduated from college?

And what if I not only didn't have to work, but also had enough money to live anywhere I chose, and do anything I wanted? Where would I be? Hell, what would I be wearing?

That's not quite my concern, though, I realize. I guess I should be asking, what do I want to be doing? I still don't know, if it doesn't involve school or idleness. I don't necessarily want to be idle, but it's out of a moral conception of idleness. Generally, it seems okay to me to do nothing but laze about and read, hang out with frends, play music, make sprawling lists of movies I'd like to watch. Sometimes, I feel like doing more, and usually for me that means writing. Other times, I feel like I should want to do more, and that usually doesn't lead to anything other than feeling bad about myself for a while.

These issues can't help but present themselves through the lens of living in a capitalist society. I have no idea of the way I'd be thinking about them if I wasn't raised in late-20th century America; this was inherent in the way I first presented the question, "what would I be doing right now if I wasn't at work." The only reason I'm asking this question is because I'm in a society where people sign over portions of their time in order to make money. Perhaps this is better than a society where I would have to work all day, and work in a less abstract way than currently. Right now the only "work" I'm doing is being restricted to this particular place right now, answering the phone every so often, occasionally doing something for my boss.

If I had never been in a position to need a job in the first place, what would I be doing? I would not be the person I am. Well, if I suddenly learned that I'd receive my salary all year long without having any responsibilities whatsover, what then? I still don't know who I am, I guess. Do my readers know who they are?

I'm starting work at the library again, starting today. I came in at 10 a.m. or, well, actually more like 10:02. There was a light drizzle, and the radio spoke of New Mexico getting precipitation from Hurricane Dolly in Texas. The sky was and still is clear and white, like a gigantic projector screen with a blank slide.

I parked in Security's parking space in front of the library (ha ha), because all the other spots were taken. Come to think of it, I should check if another spot's cleared up by now so I can move my car to safety. I have been given a temporary parking permit instead of a staff sticker, because the Human Resources office decided that the positions they've incorrectly labeled "temporary" are the employment equivalent of flight risks, and god forbid they should take a job just to get a staff sticker.

So I parked and jogged inside, ready with my key to let in the summer worker, Charlotte. To my surprise, the doors were already unlocked. Jennifer had opened the library early for a meeting of the Board of Prison Guards and Dubliners. So early that the sun was just a hope. She did this so that the prancing morons (currently occupied in making the library as loud as possible, with a few high achievers reaching the decibel levels of an airplane cockpit) could be fed their special breakfasts with their special dribble bibs. Did I mention that I hate these people? I wonder if the reason they're being so loud is because they actually don't recognize the shelves and studying people as a library. Perhaps they think it's an elegant set that the college prepared for their amusement, so that they would have the little thrill of schmoozing at the top of their lungs in an authentic, Grade A Academic Setting.

Anyway, Jennifer was waiting behind the desk, all the lights were on, the computers were active, and all the library was already humming. She introduced me to a project I could do to start out, and then she went home to take a nap.

I logged on to my library desktop for the first time in a year, and opened my email just to see if I had any messages from Laura. I found that IT had simply never closed my email account. I had messages dating back to last October, when I left Switchboard. The system had even saved three messages that I'd never deleted from 2007.

So I scrolled down to the bottom, the earliest emails in the box, which was a little like an archaeological dig. I uncovered all the meaningless little notes that the St. John's offices had sent to each other to let themselves know that time was passing (reminders about birthdays, tips for winter car maintenance, a message about ergonomic work stations). I picked away at the dirt covering each weekly emailed Ephemera, the college newsletter. I marveled at Mr. Pesic's ancient purple prose describing his concerts and lectures of days gone by. As I went through, deleting a page's worth of messages each time after making sure there wasn't anything important in them, I found one of the big things I'd been missing since I left here: tradition. In those trivial emails I rediscovered the jovial, lumbering form of St. John's traditions. I remembered how charming it was to be forever exchanging one season for another, one week for another, one day for another, and to pass from newly arrived freshmen to cider in the coffee shop, from lit fireplaces over winter break to the self-aware somberness of senior writing period, from students lounging outside as the days started getting longer again to the riotous stupidity of the party season; and through it all, at least in my own mind, to be fixed on the unchanging project I thought I took up when I first signed the roster, the project of self-improvement through study of great works. Perhaps I never really had that as a goal in the first place, but if it was a delusion, at least it was a cheery delusion. Just being here, I feel better than I have in a long time in the grey world of office work, where I had nothing to look forward to, no stimulus, no people all around me having new ideas, no challenge, and no people sharing my cheery delusion.

Now here I am again, the roar of the fiends in business suits has finally subsided, and in front of me is a list of subject headings that the Library of Congress has declared canceled, with an accompanying list of their replacements. I have a lot of fine nonsense to get to in the endless renewal of the library's minutiae. It's time to get to work.

"'From what rich soil does creativity bloom?' OK, I know that one. Self-hatred and a creepy hunger for approval." Bing! That was from an interview with a guy named Tom Peyer, who writes comic books and also humor pieces for Slate and the New York Times, and blogs.

And yes, that's probably the best description of why I want to write that I've ever seen. Weird, isn't it? But yes, for some reason I have a huge respect for good writers, and it looks from my cramped perspective as though writers must necessarily have overcome something, have conquered themselves. All creative people, really. They're in touch with themselves and the world, and they are able to craft something in whatever medium they use and put it forward as a new creation, and oh, how sublime! Really, that's how it seems to me.

And if I could finish things I write, I'd be able to give something that feels like a piece of me and have people's comments on it, hopefully approving comments, and perhaps people would respect me and be in awe of me the way I currently am of writers.

But of course I don't actually have these insights, and haven't made anything that I can show to people for my creepy need for validation. Better make them up! And that's where creativity comes from.

I'm just amazed by this quotation Tom Peyer slung off at the end of an interview. I've never seen this idea put so well and succinctly.

The sky looks like I've never seen it before: deep gray descending through a scale to bright white on the horizon. Rain is pouring down in a density that is rare for this part of the country. We've been getting rain just about every day, toward evening. I didn't pay enough attention last year to know when it fell then, but it's normal for it to rain here every day for an hour or two during the summer, mostly July and August. There's some nice thunder every so often. I feel a little nostalgic for Maryland when it's raining. I would often sit in the screened-in porch during a rainstorm on a hot and humid night, the wood of the porch chair swollen and damp on my hands, taking in the smell of the wet world, the sound of beaded rain endlessly tapping on the roof, my heart always picking up speed when the sound of the rain gained a mysterious intensity for a half a second before dropping back to its normal level, as though it was trying to punch a hole through to me. I don't know if it's the wind or just a randomly high water density in the rain clouds just above the roof that causes that sudden increase, but it still gets my heart going now.

Below the sound of the roof I hear a steady rushing sound, like a waterfall, of what I guess is rain pouring onto the ground beneath the gutters. It makes me think of billowing foam spray when a wave hits the shore. It's a hypnotic sound. When I focus on it, my eyes pan slowly toward the edge of my head, and I feel a little dizzy. And above it is the rapping on the roof.

We get flash floods here. Maybe one of these days it will lift me up to a different state of mind.