Thoughts about cataloging hyperfixations at work
i’m a librarian/cataloger and sometimes i get to catalog my hyperfixations, which puts me in a bind because how do i act cool and normal about cataloging the complete box set of justified?
when i first started the job i have now, city primeval was coming out soonish so my library’s selectors ordered replacement copies of the original series. i’d spent the month i had off between my previous job and my current one watching justified for the first time and started writing fic about it. so when i saw we were getting it, i calmly, casually asked my supervisor if i could catalog it. she was like “oh, you like that show?” and i started sweating profusely and said, again completely casually, “oh yeah it’s pretty cool i guess” 💀. then she told me she’s from lexington and couldn’t get into the show because “you can’t drive back and forth from lexington to harlan six times in a single day” (fair). but when the box set came in, she was like “it’s all yours” 🥲
when i sat down to catalog it, we realized the set needed to be split up because of the number of discs won’t fit in a single case, and the fact that you probably can’t finish the show in three weeks (but really you can if you dedicate yourself to it!!). so i split it up by season and gave each one a new record, which typically takes a long time to do; for example, we recently got the complete box set of the series bones and it took one of the catalogers several days to do it.
not only that, but the records i was working with were at least a decade old and not up to our standards so i had to update them all (had to? or wanted to??). not all records for movies and shows have the entire main cast listed as performers (beyond like, first and second billed actors) but i definitely added jacob pitts and erica tazel to each one that didn’t have them. the raylettes will not be ignored on my watch!!
it took me two or three hours to do the whole set but it was a labor of love. 💕
tbh sometimes i do feel self-conscious when my hyperfixations are Perceived, at work or elsewhere. like “oh yeah no it’s cool, i haven’t written 200k+ words of smut about this thing !!” and i think part of the reason i came back to tumblr is that i never felt self-conscious here before. it’s nice to come back to a place where you can talk about stuff you love with other people who love it as much as you do, regardless of how niche it is. i’m also very grateful that my wife has always been super supportive of my interests and never makes me feel bad about it. that sounds like a low bar, but i know quite a few people whose partners/spouses/friends will tire of them talking about their hyperfixations and special interests and kind of shame them about it.
i truly lucked out that @sleeping-selkies reads my fic and watches the show with me and comes up with silly non-canonical facts about it (such as the existence of what she calls “the worm cut” of the finale, which would take a whole other post to explain). still, it is nice to find more people who are just as into justified as me, and those of you who followed me or read my fic and have welcomed me here, thank you!! 💜
