Back to Normal?

As some of you may know, I am a Youth Services librarian. And let me tell you, Covid really effed everything up for my teen programming.

Back in the day, early 2020, (if you can possibly think back that far) was a glorious time at the library. My book club had a mighty following, usually garnering the attendance of a dozen teenagers with a core group of five that typically showed up to absolutely every program I put on. Then I had about another half dozen who would religiously attend all of the other, non-book club programs, which usually cycled between arts and crafts, food related activities, and various programs where they were competing to be the best at any random activity. It was fun, it was great, and I very rarely had to worry that I’d need to cancel a program because of low attendance.

Then March of 2000 and a little thing called Covid struck. I remember the week when the first shut down was announced and the panic kind of spread. Everyone was confused and unsure of what the next several weeks were going to look like. Programs were canceled. Then the library shut down all together. Then things started back up, slowly and virtually in regards to programming. But teens didn’t want to do virtual programming, not after the debacle that virtual school had become.

Then, finally, the library opened back up and we started tp do programs in person. But something had happened while everything had been put on hold. Something I hadn’t really thought about when we notified of those first few program cancellations. I found myself in a weird position. The position that comes with doing Youth Services programming, programming that is typically very much reserved for children of certain ages. And that was the fact that, during the year or so we were on hiatus, my original group of teens suddenly weren’t teens anymore. They’d aged out of my programming and were well on their way to graduation and college and future careers.

It was sad to see them go when I’d missed out on so many programs with them, so many fantastic book discussions. And it was also sad because I just was not getting the younger teens into the library to replace them. It wasn’t just me, though. All programming seemed to be slow on returning to the statistics that we’d seen before. People were afraid to go out. People just didn’t really want to do things in big groups.

But finally, finally things are starting to return to normal. My September program numbers are much closer to what they used to be once upon a time. I’m just hoping that the rest of the year will continue that trend.

I’m ready for normal to be normal again.