This whole "solo" thing is exhausting

It's not necessarily that my workload is unmanageable. In fact, with hardly any patron interaction (a very sad thing for me) and none of the drama of working in a large department, I have ample time to get my work done. The thing that's wearing me out is the lack of micro-managing. Before I started library school, I was in a job with a boss who spent all her time making lists of things she wanted me to do. Then in public libraries, projects are often just ways to fill your time between reference questions and programs. Not that projects aren't important, but they're always second priority after immediate patron needs, which means the patrons pretty much run your schedule.

In my current job, there's nobody telling me what to do and very few people asking for my help. Which means, if I do something stupid, like decide to check the catalog records of every single book on the shelf, there's no one to distract me with something new and quick and diverting. It's just me and the books. Which is appealing in a purely olefactory sense, but so very tedious.

Don't get me wrong, a very large part of me is enjoying being, in a sense, my own boss, and I like the fact that I get to decide how to arrange the magazines (you would have thought they would be alphabetical already) and which books to buy. But another part of me, probably the part that spent 7 years in post-secondary education, really wants someone to tell me what to do!