Almost all the jobs I had before and after that have felt abstract, distant from people’s real problems. They’ve involved me having to convince myself that the work was important and that it was making an impact. When I’m theorizing and organizing for the “digital commons,” I constantly questioned myself if I was making the right kind of interventions. If the things I’m fighting for — platform co-operatives, community networks, digital research and cultural archives, Free and Open Source projects — will ever become so full-fledged as to help us confront the planetary crisis that lies ahead of us.  At the library, I wasn’t fighting for a future that I wanted to manifest, I was standing in it. All the books that passed through my hands, the kindergarteners that sang along with me during story time, the patrons who gleefully placed an item in front of me to be checked out. I’d never seen so many grateful people day to day, week to week. The high you get from helping someone find exactly what they were looking for, is right there on the shelf (and they don’t need to pay for it because it’s already theirs!). There’s seriously nothing else like it.