Professional ADD

No, that's not Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, but Attention Deficit Disorder. Ever since I took on my new position here at the library, I've found it difficult if not downright impossible to post a blog entry, send an email, or even read an article online from start to finish. At first I was chalking up this newfound inability to maintain focus as being my own damned fault, a natural consequence of a wandering mind and a rambling prose style, but the more I thought about it the less I was convinced that this was an internal failing. Sure, I like to have about twenty browser windows open at any time, but didn't I do that at the Circulation Desk as well and still manage to crank out the equivalent of a novella every week here on the blog?

So what's different then? Well, the nature of job for starters. Supervisory positions tend to assume a mantle of uber-responsibility, such that even when you do have the rare free moment you find yourself looking for something else to worry about rather than throwing oneself into the windfall of leisure-time. The fact that this job consists of several various tasks also probably has something to do with it as well -- at the Circ Desk one was always interrupted in the same manner to perform the same function, with the occasional troubleshooting activity as the situation demanded, allowing a train of thought to be easily recovered when that task was complete; whereas up here in the Reading Room many patron interactions involve some kind of complexity and decision-making on the part of the desk worker, such that when I finally do get back to whatever it was I was doing beforehand nine times out of ten I've totally lost the...

(Pauses five minutes while I order several items from the Depository for visiting scholar, field a phone call from an alum, place an item on the 10-Day Hold Shelf for one of our professors, offer some last-minute advice to a trainee who'll be working tonight, then take the head count on the half-hour.)

Wait. What was I talking about? Ah, crap -- it happened again!