Thursday I watched for my talents in Activator theme. What I noticed was my impatience to sit and talk about things. I want to just make decisions and get on with all the things that need to be done. This was very apparent to me during our supervisor's meeting on Thursday.

The insights into the Activator Strength are so on target with what I have said above:
I can see how ideas can be turned into action.
I want to do things immediately.
I am not so sure that I am powerful in making things happen or getting other people to take action.
I do get criticized for being impatient and "running over" other people.
I hope I bring creative energy to problem solving but sometimes I think I just forge ahead to be moving.

Calling Question #1

At the end of each week's study, there is a "calling question" leading us to find our calling in our lives. This week's question is "There are so many needs to be addressed in our world today: poverty, injustice, loneliness, substance abuse - to name a few......what needs make you stop and think, "I wish I could help!"?
I am constantly reminded how truly blest I am in my life and how small my problems are when I am faced every day with the people that our society has abandoned. Whether it is the homeless person who smells less than lovely and acts a little funny, the man everyone assumes is homeless but really just can't find an affordable apartment, the teen left to her own devices all day or the lonely person whose only human interaction in a day may be talking to my staff, it seems truly amazing to me in a culture with so much that individuals like this must exist without support, either monetary, physical or emotional.
I do not have any answers but I do know that my heart strings are tugged every time I see one of these forgotten ones.

How does it feel to be able to "name" your talents?

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. - 1 Corinthians 12:7

I think in many ways, seeing the results of the StrengthFinder makes me feel very self-conscious. I do agree that most seem to elucidate particular aspects of my personality pretty well. In day to day life, however, these strengths aren't always perceived by others as positive.

Living Your Strengths - a new direction for this blog

I am currently involved in a class at church called Living your Strengths based on a book by the same name. Since part of the class involves a daily reflection, I've decided to reinvigorate this blog as my reflection tool. The first activity we had to do for the class was take the Clifton StrengthsFinder test. The test was a bunch of descriptors and we had 20 seconds to determine which of each pair best described ourselves. The results are given in 5 Strength areas. Mine were as follows:
1. Strategic - meaning I can analyze and determine effective ways to solve problems or do things.
2. Input - I am a collector of information and things that may come in handy some day.
3. Activator - I would much rather learn by doing than over studying.
4. Self-Assurance - I have confidence in my decisions once they are made.
5. Learner - I love to learn new things simply because new information energizes me and feeds my Input strength.

Thing #23 Time to Fly!

Well, I must say that I had doubts along the way that I would ever get to the end, not because it wasn't interesting and fun, but just because I never seemed to have time to work on my "things"!
I think Library Thing is one of my favorites, as are the more creative apps like picnik, flickr and some of the image generators. I am not artistic, so having web sites where I can play with visuals is a real plus. I also think just the act of blogging has been enjoyable. I have always liked the idea of keeping a journal, but have never done it. Obviously, I don't want to spill my guts here for everyone to read, but the act of putting thoughts down in a slightly structured way has been good.
I think I am still struggling with some of the "social networking" aspects of many of these applications and tools. I like Facebook, but really don't care is somebody else is reading the same books I am. I'm already in 3 book clubs with people whose facial expressions I can see!
As a learning tool, this has been awesome - I have seen so much interaction and mutual assistance among my staff during our journey to Thing #23. A huge thanks to the Nebraska Library Commission and to Michael, Allana, Christa & Susan for all their work and encouragement. Who knows - maybe I will come to appreciate Twitter some day :)

Thing #22 Podcasts

I never get to listen to "All About Books" on NET radio, so I subscribed to that podcast. I also subscribed to "Uncontrolled Vocabulary" mainly because the name is great. The challenge will now be to find the time to listen to my new subscriptions. I have found that I am not very good at making time to go in and look, read, listen to the feeds I have subscibed in Bloglines. I think I will have to winnow my list down to a few things that I will actually attend to on a regular basis. Nothing fancy here, but I do think the whole podcast/RSS idea would be an amazing way to announce events for the library, do book reviews, book talks, etc. Maybe just once a week "Library News". I'm sure how often Lincoln City Library does their podcast, but that is certainly a model to look at.

Thing #21 You tube

I have loved and laughed at YouTube for a long time, but this exercise started me thinking about using a tool like YouTube to create tutorials and/or marketing pieces for our library. One of the most amazing things about YouTube is all the stuff that is there - you can literally spend hours watching silly stuff or looking for meaningful video on a specific topic. The searching seems a bit hit or miss to me - an awful lot of hits per search, meaning there is a lot of sifting that the user has to do.

My favorite library marketing video is this one that was done by or for the Columbus Public Library: