The snail I am is no longer the snail I was.

It’s long been important for me to have a sense of who I am and to be able to say “I am” without additional clauses.

I am

I draw strength from being in a spot to be able to say that. Without it, I am adrift; lost.

Today, I can still say it, but it means something different to what it did a week ago. I’ve changed; a change that was a very definite klunk in my being – like an elevator stopping at a new floor; up or down or left or right; does not matter. On Saturday, I spent a few hours sitting in a comfy, leafy space – on a sort of jetty – at the State Library of QLD, by the river. I was going back through the day before and the conference stream I co-convened (that requires another post – it worked and was good and was fun). Klunk.

My answer to “Who am I?” has changed.

I have spent 12 months or so, very out of my comfort zone…so far out of my comfort zone that I don’t know where it is anymore. I co-convened a committee of 5 to run a full day stream at a national conference. An experimental stream incorporating elements of things that were well known on smaller scales…in the library world at least. I like structure but it was unstructured. I like engagement and there was. I suck at minutae but folk around me covered it, and impressively so.

A year of politics and discussion and fear and planning, and times I simply buried my head in the sand and hoped the world would leave me alone.

It didn’t.

And I changed.

My sense of what I can do has expanded. The passion remains; burning within.

I am.