In a city where the freeways are wide, the weather is muggy, and the salsa is plentiful, I was a librarian. Rather, I was PAID to be a librarian. I earned money helping people find answers to interesting questions, purchasing books to share with others, playing around with techno-tools, and exploring information online. I wasn’t on a time-clock, I could come and go as I pleased, and I could always find a good comic book on the shelf on the way to my office.

It was lovely. (For the most part.)

Only a few months and several hundred eastward miles later, I’m now on a different coast where tortillas are elusive but the air is fresh and cool. More to the point: I no longer work in a library. I still introduce myself as a librarian, which at first I thought was a force of habit, but I now realize is something more than that. You can take the girl out of the library but you can’t take the librarian out of the girl. I still jump at the chance to answer a challenging research question or help someone who looks lost or confused (when it’s not me, of course). I still start shelf-reading when I see an out-of-place volume and I still think that the musty smell of book dust is sexy.

I’m a librarian, regardless of whether or not someone pays me to be one.

So while I sit in employment limbo, eagerly seeking the right opportunity to channel my inner-info-professional into big librarian money, I like to think of myself as a freelance librarian–reading, writing, and referencing my way through my new home.