Working at a Library

     One of the things that I have been blessed with, recently, is the opportunity to work at a library. As a writer and a reader it stimulates my thoughts on the subject when I spend an afternoon surrounded by books. Unfortunately, my problem is simple; the way I have my life set now, I don't have a lot of extra time for books.
     A solution to this problem may be something like reading when I DO have spare time, or... yeah, that's about it.Right now, though, I'm taking an English class at college which requires a lot of reading. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I don't get to read a lot of what I want to read.
     In any case, working at a library has been an awesome experience. I've heard of some guys get jobs like de-tassling corn, working at a camp (the Outdoors isn't a place I fancy much) and doing other such menial or very physical work.
     The main benefit of this job is that I'm constantly around books and others who love books and who like to write, as I do. During my breaks I often read, whether out of a book of essays for class, a writer's digest book on novel writing (from another library in the area) or from a novel.
     For anyone who finds this and either has a love for writing as I do, or just wants to improve their writing, let me give you a tip. There are two ways of getting better at writing; A. Read some more, or B. Write some more. That's all there is to it! Of course you can work on your skills, practicing, developing plots and characters, but a good part of it is letting your subconcious analyze it.
     But what do I mean by that? I mean that sometimes (for those of you who don't have a parent who studied psycology), the subconcious part of your brain, the part of your brain you can't control, thinks for you. It processes the information that you take in throughout the day, a week, or maybe longer. This is why getting up from a task like writing a paper and going for a walk is so helpful. It allows your subconcious to work, figuring out, for you, exactly what you want to say, or how to approach an issue that you're writing about.
     I remember hearing a story about Thomas Edison. Apparently, when he just couldn't think through something, he would take a nap. He sat in an armchair holding a stone. Beneath his hand holding said stone was a pan. When he began to fall asleep, his mind went into overdrive, thinking about the last thing he had on his mind. When he fell asleep, he also relaxed his muscular control of his hand. This released the stone which landed in the pan with a CLANG! Then he was up and had the answer.
     What I took from this is that when we sleep, our brains process what has happened through our day. That's where dreams come from. It also explains why dreams are often about what has happened to us through the day. Even in popular fiction and in movies, the hero's bad dream is about the crises that he is going through. It is his mind processing all the information that his five senses brought in throughout the day.
     The thing that would bring the right answer to mind was Edison's subconscious working on the issue at hand. Most kids have the idea that if you think really hard intentionally you will come up with an answer. Sometimes this is true, but allowing your brain to do what it was made to do enables us to do great things, like inventing the lightbulb.
     As far as working at libraries is concerned, I ran into a friend of mine at another library not far from mine. I was surprised first by seeing him working there, but more surprised at what he thought of the job. He said that it was better then de-tassling corn (which I think he has done before), but he didn't really seem to enjoy the work.
     I know that it's a difference, probably, of personality, but I'm not sure. I'm not OCD or anything, but I like to organize things sometimes, alphabetically, by size or color, etc. I'm one of those guys who will, for fun, organize his M&Ms into color piles, eating them until there is an even number of each color. Then it's six at a time, as there are six colors, until they're gone.
     I think that organizing things, sometimes, helps me to understand them. For instance, if I hear about political candidates (and I never follow politics, except inadvertently) it's secondhand from my brother, who loves analyzing government. He's going into law, and he'll be good at it. He loves justice. Anyways, when I hear of a political candidate, if I don't know already, I try to figure out what group he goes in, those who are Conservative in their views of government and those who are liberal in such matters.