The strangest dream

A cloudy sunset through rain-streaked glass, looking out over Geelong West from the eleventh floor of a high-rise student residence, July 2021. Photograph by the author

I walked into the fancy grocer’s the other day and heard the shop radio playing a familiar song. You know, the football song. ‘I followed orders / God knows where I’ve been / but I woke up alone / all my wounds were clean / I’m still here / And I’m still a fool for the Holy Grail.’ Guess I’d better learn how football works. It’s that kind of town.

It’s been a few weeks since I uprooted myself from the only city I’ve ever lived in, quit my job at a prestigious but thoroughly miserable institution, said goodbye to my family and acquaintances, relocated interstate, and took up a new position as the metadata team leader at a regional academic library. I am beyond exhausted. I have never worked so hard, been to so many meetings, been welcomed so warmly, read so much documentation, been paid so much money, forgotten so many mealtimes (oops). But I have also never once regretted coming here. Moving to Victoria is the best personal and professional decision I have ever made. I hoped it would be. It’s been a long time coming.

My new job is a rare breed: a specialist metadata librarian, leading a team of specialist metadata librarians. Our work has changed significantly in the last couple of decades as academic libraries pivot to e-resources, where boutique item-level cataloguing has been largely replaced by scaled-up data enhancements (I almost wrote ‘enchantments’ here, and look, we are data wizards). The library’s priorities neatly line up with my own: ethical and culturally safe resource description, bibliographic identity management and other forms of authority control, untangling knotty workflows and making the most of our labour. I love working somewhere that cares this much about data quality.

I can’t believe how nice everyone is here. It’s like the whole library is structurally lovely. The ghosts of past experience tell me that I will surely regret this comment, but there are a lot of people at MPOW who have been there for decades—not because they’re unemployable elsewhere, but because it’s a genuinely nice place to work. I’ve had pockets of niceness in other jobs (including the last one), but this really is the first time I’ve experienced such an entirely warm, friendly, welcoming, functional, healthy workplace, amplified by strong, transparent, accountable senior leadership. It’s unreal. It’s amazing. I can’t believe I’ve been missing this all my life.

Some bits are proving as challenging as I expected, particularly the whole team leading thing. I had never managed so much as a sausage sizzle before I started this job, plus it’s not like I came with a lot of people skills built-in. Some of you might be asking ‘But how did you get a supervisory role with no supervisory experience?!’ (and, honestly, same) but I do know that I was hired partly for my technical skill, and partly because I seemed like someone who could learn the other stuff and contribute positively to team culture. I’ve had enough bad managers to know I never want to be like them, but I also have lots of support from my boss, my peer mentor (never had one of those before, it’s great) and my team. I hope I can do okay.

(I was astonished to learn that this blog already featured in my team’s professional reading list on our wiki. Hi team!)

I know this job isn’t the Holy Grail and my vocational awe is probably showing, but it really does feel like I’m living a dream. I think it will feel more real once I find somewhere to live (surprisingly difficult!) and start delving more deeply into the long list of projects that have awaited my arrival. This position had been vacant for close to eighteen months throughout Covid and Victoria’s extended lockdowns. There’s a lot that could use my attention. I can’t wait to get stuck in.

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to get my hands on this thing. I can’t believe I made it here. I can’t believe this is real.