On Living Dangerously

When I was a few decades younger and a few feet shorter, I was the only Girl Scout too afraid to attempt a thirty foot rock wall at summer camp.

Repelling down the rock wall actually looked fun, I sniffled. But it was the climb that scared the molasses out of my January.

I cried at my own embarrassment over the realization that everyone else was braver than me. I cried even harder at the realization that my fear was irrational--after all, there were ropes to catch us if we lost our footing along the ascent.

I think it was that shame over my refusal to try something that defined my commitment to adventure.

Food. Music. Jobs. Far-away places. Even class three rock climbing over 4,000 feet of vertical wonderland--without the ropes to catch me if I lost my footing along the ascent.

Oh yes. This Scout decided to live dangerously.

Since that fateful summer camp encounter with the rock wall, I grew a few feet taller. My hair got long, then short, then long again. But adventure wasn't all fun and games and heads of hair. I ran for sixth grade class president and lost. I tried out for the high school musical and bombed.

But there was one thing I was always good at.

Trying again.

I got my ham radio license. I won a creative writing contest. I got into grad school.

A few years ago, I piloted a small plane and I managed not to crash over the Port of Long Beach.

And a few weeks ago, I almost beat the Legend of Zelda before I remembered I am a grown-up and realized what time it was. But that's the thing about librarians--we are a committed bunch. For me, a good video game is like a good book, and bookmarks are for quitters.

Aside from liking video games, I like things made of paper. I acquire unnecessary quantities of greeting cards and postage stamps and picture books and wrapping paper and tiny hand-decorated notebooks from around the world. This paper situation is probably the subconscious reason I became a librarian. This is also probably a fire hazard.

So I tend to linger in stores that peddle such items. Once while browsing through the graduation tchotchkes at one of these stores, I stumbled across a rosegold plaque that read "Dangerously Overeducated." This was some length of time after I found myself pursuing my third graduate degree.

I tried to imagine myself with the plaque on my desk, but I didn't want to be that person. Once, someone made a reference to this (embarrassing?) quality in a pitch to me for a vacant position extended my direction. Take this job. You are not going to be hireable elsewhere. You are dangerously overeducated.

I did not feel good about a pitch preying on my worst fears (broadly, failure and disappointment). And yet, as a general rule, I try not to take myself too seriously. But I do like school. I love learning. I'll stop learning when I'm dead, because for me, a refusal to learn or a failure to try brings me back to that rock wall. I won't go around wearing a plaque, but that doesn't mean I should feel embarrassed for choosing to learn and try a lot.

To her credit, it might have looked like I was collecting degrees. And I probably succeeded in destroying a small rain forest with all that paper. But it would make good fuel in a zombie apocalypse, and that had to be worth something.

One or two graduate programs earlier, I found myself driving behind someone with the license plate frame "I'm a Librarian. And I will shush your ass." I decided I wanted to be like her when I grew up.

I used the shush line in an audition for NBCUniversal's Halloween Horror Nights on my 30th birthday. At the time I was a solo librarian running a preschool resource center--not a really scary occupation, unless you're the solo librarian running the preschool resource center. What followed was a freak show of my worst scream and worst dying scene and worst monster impression. These displays were so bad that the casting directors were amused. Compared to the theater majors and the veteran ScareActors, I was neither scary nor qualified, but I was memorable. I figured I was more likely to be Snapchatted than cast.

I was cast. I learned that it's easier to be scary when you're wearing a prosthetic Wolf Walker zombie face or vaulting out of the shadows in a hairy ghillie suit. And I wasn't just scary--I was fearless.

I met up with people in dark alleys, and I scared the molasses out of their Januaries. And let's be real: sometimes scary, balanced with the right amount of safe, is downright thrilling.

More real talk, though: there's no such thing as fearlessness. Courage can't exist without fear, as we learned in Girl Scouts. It takes courage to face uncertainty, and uncertainty is like Monday--it's always going to be there. It may not be Monday today, but it's just around the corner.

We can deny it, will it away, imagine it right off the calendar. But I'd rather embrace Monday than be smacked in the face with it.

So I decided to receive the overeducated/unhireable drag-me-downer as a dare. Embrace the uncertainty, and see what happens. Maybe she was right, maybe I was unhireable. Maybe I would never receive another job offer. But I declined hers, and shortly thereafter I received two more.

That's the thing about librarians. We're dangerously hireable.

It may take a few decades or growing entire heads of hair before you and I feel comfortable tackling our next rock walls. But let's decide to grow and live and be the best versions of ourselves, and never be ashamed of those kinds of decisions.

If you've made it this far down the page, or if you're just now tuning in, here's the Twitter-sized version of things: when the haters get you down, dare yourself to defy their miserable expectations. Watch out for Mondays and unsavory characters lurking in dark alleys. Find the thrill in what terrifies you most. And ultimately, be like a librarian--live dangerously.

Or at least invest in some stuff made of paper.

You won't regret it.