Sly & The Family Brarian

I want to take you higher!

So thank you for letting me be myself . . . again . . .

I started a blog on 10/21/07 but only got as far as two posts before Life once again interrupted.

Used this career downtime to build my network of LinkedIn contacts from well under 100 to 1,800+.

The premise being that conventional job search methods (applying to positions on job boards, etc.) would be less likely to help me achieve my immediate goal: a full-time corporate communications position within 30 miles of my home in Bridgewater, N.J.

I even appeared on CNBC’s “The Big Idea, with Donnie Deutsch” 7/30, apparently stumping their panel of experts with my career-limbo quandary.

So here I am, bloodied but unbowed, and ready to get back in touch with my authentic voice again.

And after leafing through Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Black Book of Connections, I realized what the other problem was: I was looking to “get something” out of my network without first injecting sufficient value into it.

That will be my mission here: to provide a few career “lagniappes” that will help get others unstuck, and in so doing, encourage them to look out for me as well.

As for the name “Slybrarian,” it is derived from the term “cybrarian,” which is one of the many selves I aspire to become.  I completed nine credits of reference librarianship coursework at one of the country’s top library/information science graduate schools, in addition to a master’s degree in communications from Seton Hall University, and 11 credits in their law-degree (J.D.) program. I’m a news and information junkie, as well as a corporate mentor, counselor and coach. I love to write, edit and research, and I’ve got plenty of experience in helping companies tell their stories (i.e., right messages to the right people through the right channels at the right times).

I do have a sly sense of humor, and I am also a blues singer and harmonica player, as well as a three-time marathon runner.  Sly has many definitions, not all of them particularly charitable.  The definition I prefer: someone who regularly appreciates the fact that truth is stranger than fiction, and that strangeness — things outside of one’s experience — is a quality to be treasured rather than reviled.

In other words (final Sly & The Family Stone reference, I promise), different strokes for different folks . . . we can make it if we try.