Meredith wrote quite a thoughtful post about rockstardom and how to achieve it. This post of mine? Is probably going to be labeled “sour grapes.” Well, so be it. I think there’s more to the story.
I am not a rock star in librarianship. Meredith and I both have second master’s, graduated at the same time, got jobs at the same time, blogged about getting jobs at the same time, got interested in social software at the same time (well, okay, I started blogging first, but that’s irrelevant)—and she’s a rock star and I’m not. Let’s pick through that a moment.
First of all, everything in Meredith’s post is absolutely true. Fill a need. Be passionate. Spend your own time and money. Make it about something besides you. Grow some guts. Network. Don’t let geographic barriers bar you from the opportunities available via web contacts. Self-promote. Second of all, I don’t think Meredith and I are all that far apart in raw talent. (If you disagree, leave me to my happy illusions, please!) Third of all, I’ve done nearly everything Meredith mentions. (Including spend money, gah. Like water sometimes.) Nobody’s ever accused me of a lack of passion!
But for me, that didn’t turn out to be enough. Hmmmm.
Let’s be frank. Some of it is right-place-right-time-right-topic caprice. The spotlight hit wikis just as Meredith did. She didn’t plan that; she couldn’t have. Some people do try to plan it, try to make spotlights that they can then inhabit. Sometimes it even works… but honestly, I think rockstars are different from attention-mongers, and I definitely have an internal classifier; don’t you? As for me, institutional repositories don’t have a spotlight, and very likely never will. So I could make all the right moves (not that I have; just sayin’) and still never be a rockstar. Nota bene, this is not an argument about who “deserves” rockstardom, not least because I find such arguments virulently poisonous; it’s an argument about who gets it, and a plea to people not to beat themselves up if they don’t. Sometimes it’s really, truly not you.
Some of the rockstar machine is inextricably tied up with societal appearance norms that privilege certain looks over others. This is an unpopular thing for me to say, but so be it; it’s true. Meredith comes one hell of a lot closer to this society’s standard for attractiveness than I do. There’s a bloody good reason I keep pictures of myself off the web; it’s far better for me if the Internet doesn’t know I’m a dog. Again, this is not an argument about just deserts—well, okay, to some extent it is; appearance ought to be largely irrelevant, but it’s not, and that has some evil, evil knock-on effects. People of color don’t get a fair shake in this or any field, and yes, the markedness of their appearance compared to the white-bread norm is partly why. Women don’t get a fair shake in tech for similar reasons; we’re capital-D Different. What I’m saying is, if rockstardom is your goal, it’s worth thinking about where you are with regard to appearance. You can be plain, even as mud-fence ugly a woman as I am (note that ugly doesn’t matter as much for men as for women), and still do fine; it’s a disadvantage that may, however, disqualify you from actual rockstardom. Life isn’t fair.
Certain demeanor expectations also operate in the rockstar realm. Library rockstars are, logically enough, what we think librarians ought to be: genial, fun, optimistic, helpful, gregarious, pleasant people—but not too in-your-face about anything (again, especially for women; men have more leeway here), and certainly not deeply anti-establishment (for several possible values of “establishment”), because that’s intimidating. Think about the library rockstars you know, and see if I’m not mostly right. Now me, I violate these norms regularly onblog, on-mailing-list, and in my speaking and writing (Roach Motel was one gigantic exercise in norm violation in the IR subfield; it shocked one of its reviewers!). I don’t see how there can be any doubt in this world that it’s made me an unlikely candidate for rockstardom.
I’m not alone. I have good friends in librarianship who are just that leetle bit too iconoclastic to be rockstars; I adduce Bob “boats against the current” Molyneux as a good example, since he’s gone more or less public about it. They find their places, most of them, as I’ve found mine; sometimes very high places (you know who you are, person I have in mind!). More power to ’em; sometimes a damn good hole-poking skeptic is worth a dozen rockstars. But sometimes they chafe. Sometimes I chafe. Rockstars tend to keep their chafing to themselves, or to a tight circle of friends. Not an absolute rule, just a tendency.
Ah, me. Discouraging the young again. I should be ashamed, I suppose.
Look, folks, rockstardom isn’t the only face of success. In spite of my bulldog’s face, in spite of my snark, in spite of everything, I am quite as successful as I need or want to be. I found work in my heart’s home. When I need to say something serious about what I do, I can get it said and hearkened to, here or even (to my own surprise) in The Literature. (I could do considerably more, even, if I were a more fluent writer than I am.) In spite of the people I’ve alienated (and they are not few), I have my own network of well-loved colleagues and friends; I’ve never been lonely in this marvelous profession. If rockstardom got dumped in my lap, I’m honestly not entirely sure what I would do, but I lean toward “running and hiding,” because I have serious being-around-hordes and travel-hassle limits, and rockstardom would stomp all over them.
(I have an evil brain. It is now projecting images of 1984’s Room 101, with me shackled to the chair and rockstardom lurking and lashing its tail behind the little grate, with me screaming, “Do it to Sarah! Not me! Sarah!” Yeah. Evil. Um, sorry, Sarah.)
Most of all, I have the luxury of defining success for myself. I fully and freely acknowledge that non-tenure-track academic librarianship has its discontents, but they pale to insignificance beside the phenomenal freedom of picking my own goalposts. Rockstardom, even in easygoing librarianship, has been known to turn into the Russian’s plaint in Chess:
Now I’m where I want to be and who I want to be and doing what I always said I would and yet I feel I haven’t won at all!
Running for my life and never looking back in case there’s someone right behind to shoot me down and say he always knew I’d fall.
No, thanks. That’s not a life I’d even want to risk having. See my sidebar! And think good and hard about your own goalposts, please, before you set your sights on rockstardom.
