I owe you (an explanation)

One of the primary difficulties we have as a species right now is that we have largely succumbed to the belief that we don’t owe each other anything. Consequently, one of the questions I carry around with me each day is “what do we owe to each other?” *

So far, I’ve decided that in the sort of world I want to live in, we owe one another a kindness and compassion that might otherwise be called grace. We owe it to one another to use the gifts that we have been given and to share what we can. Most of all, we owe one another honesty. And right now, I feel like I owe you all an explanation.

Around this time last year, I decided to change careers. There’s a longer story here, but the short version is that I decided to go back to school in January for a master’s degree in library and information science. In a year or so, I intend to transition into either an academic library setting or a related field (like publishing) and I have been working my tail off to make that happen. The decision to go back to school, on top of a more-than-full-time job, family and freelance work meant that something had to give, and the thing that gave was the Daily Skep.

For a while, I was foolish enough to believe that I could keep everything afloat. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Eric Key who jumped in and added some great content to the blog this year, but over the last few days I’ve decided that it’s time to be honest with myself (and with all of you), and to say that for the foreseeable future, there will be no new posts on this blog. I owe you that, at least. The site will be live until next May, but beyond that, I cannot say.

I am proud of what we’ve built here. I always will be. It has been a labor of love for me, but like any other project, there’s a time to stop sanding and polishing and to release it into the world to let it be what it will be. That time is now.

Thank you all.

Non sibi, sed aliis

-JM

*You can take this question down the road of contractualism, but you may be better served to start here.

Advertisements

9 Comments Add yours

  1. oltexasboy says:

    Listen bud, I figure your about the age of my grandchildren, and you are learning what your elders have been trying to tell you, When you try to do it all nothing gets finished. One thing i have learned is that the saying “anything worth doing is worth doing right” is crap. It should be anything worth doing is worth finishing”. Prioritize what needs to be done and send the rest of it packing.. Good luck

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Ron Aylor says:

    Good luck and God bless!

    Like

  3. Jared Tohlen says:

    Jim, all I need to say is no apology necessary. I appreciate you and your efforts here, and I know they haven’t been in vain. Anyone who has read a post here or interacted with you or Eric has benefited greatly in more ways than one. It’s great to see you working hard toward your next steps in life. The fact that you are (or were? maybe it changed) working toward an MLS is awesome. I’ve considered trying to get into the publishing world, too. I enjoy editing and designing layouts a bit too much to ignore. Anyway if it’s the Skep’s time then that’s just the way of it, and we can be content with that. Though, if you have any shirts left, I’d be happy to take one off your hands!

    Like

    1. Much appreciated. Think of it as a benediction – a good word to go forth in the world. Oh, BTW, I’ll send you the artwork if you want to print your own shirt.

      Like

  4. Joseph D says:

    Good luck, from a Greenville reader.

    I’m married to a librarian, and I’ve worked in academic libraries on and off for most of my adult life. From your writings I think you’ll fit in.

    Feel free to email if you’ve any questions, it’s a big world that LIS school doesn’t always have the time to fully represent.

    Like

    1. Thank you Joseph. I worked in the library at Duke (as a grad student) and fell in love. It has just taken me a little over a decade to get back to it. Honestly, the most intimidating part is the job search. My wife teaches at the local community college, so we wouldn’t mind staying in the area.

      Like

  5. R Alexander says:

    Best of luck James, and thank you.
    Robin

    Like

  6. Strikes and gutters. Ups and downs. The Dude abides.

    Good luck Jim.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. R S Greenwood says:

    Life is a journey. Many stops and diversions along the way. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and observations with us other explorers. And bty, can’t wait to tackle the Shinto-inspired bar stool.

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s
https://thedailyskep.com/2018/10/04/i-owe-you-an-explanation/
thedailyskep.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2019-18
87125
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:BCIWB5TOPHTZKAOZNQAF6SZWWZ66EUY5
<urn:uuid:cc22486c-824e-4d93-aa4c-35ad39243c2a>
2019-04-24T12:57:21Z
192.0.78.25
text/html
sha1:VSNUAMW7RWXU4LRUXUQ6SARIAALJONPS
<urn:uuid:073a315c-2cc3-4ea1-a1ed-f271d88666ad>
https://thedailyskep.com/2018/10/04/i-owe-you-an-explanation/
response
<urn:uuid:4e2b15dc-173c-4661-b657-227e32b7f91e>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-18
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for April 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-109-209-241.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/