Conflicting compulsions

I'm sure everyone has these - the urge to eat and to be skinny, the urge to sleep and stay up late watching a movie or reading a book.  One of mine has to do with going to the library.  I find that when visiting a library, any library, it's almost impossible for me to leave without checking something out.  Lots of time I go home with an armful of stuff that seemed to tempting to pass up - movies, books I've heard buzz about, biographies, DIY manuals.  Of course, I don't have time to read all of this stuff, so invariably some of it goes back unread, and sometimes very quickly.  Because my other conflicting compulsion is to have few items checked out to my name.  When I was working as a librarian I saw time and time again people checking out gobs of items and then having no idea where one or more of them wound up.  I do a mental rundown every night to see if I can account for my stuff, after checking my account online.  I haven't lost anything yet, but I have a deep-seated fear that one day I will stand before a librarian at a checkout counter and have nothing to say in my defense, except, "I'm sorry.  I've looked everywhere.  I have no idea where it is."

Not that this is the end of the world.  Librarians deal with lost stuff all the time - replacing, reordering, checking and re-checking the shelves.  But I have librarian guilt and a sense of "There but for the grace of God, go I."

My solution?  I take back items as I use them.  I regularly detour to the library on trips out so I can return stuff.  Or a walk the route that the local library is on so I can use the drop box.  My account is constantly changing as I go to a library, can't pass up a bunch of stuff, and then try to sift through the stack to winnow down what's on my card.

I know; I'm weird.

tags: libraries