Aloha Librarians!
Thank you for taking the time to lean more about our book, Where’s the Map? Create Your OWN Guide to Life After Graduation. One of our goals here at Where’s the Map is to make this kind of life planning, goal setting information available to as many young people as possible, and we see public libraries as important partners in this goal, primarily because they played such a vital role in making us who we are today.Why are libraries so important to us?
Like many people these days, Beth and I went all the way through college without giving much thought to what we were going to do with our degrees after we got out of school, and as a result we found ourselves in jobs that weren’t really “us”. Working at a job that you don’t really like is OK for a little while, but it eventually it starts to wear on you. Before long, we were both waking up with knots in our stomachs, dreading whatever we had to face that day. Rather than admitting defeat and settling for lives that we were less than excited about, we decided to do something about it.
So, we quit our jobs, gave away almost all of our possessions, and moved a solar powered goat farm in one of the most isolated areas of the Big Island of Hawaii so we could take a short sabbatical from the “real world” and take some time to figure out what we really wanted to do with our lives.
This “figuring out what we really wanted to do with our lives” involved a lot of research. We read dozens of books, searched for information on the Internet, and we interviewed many, many people about their careers. The work we did on the farm we did in trade for our room and board, so we had no budget at all to do the research that we saw as being so vital to our future success. This is where the local public libraries here in Hawaii played an invaluable role in our lives.
What was the problem?
Problem #1: We didn’t have any money for the books, periodicals, or audio and video recordings we needed for our research. No problem. What our local library didn’t have, they were able to get from other branches from around the state.
Problem #2: Our farm was so far off the main road that there was no way to get on the Internet. Again, the library to the rescue! The Internet connected computers available at the library allowed us to conduct our web-based research, communicate with the people we were interviewing, and stay in touch with our family and friends back on the mainland for free!
Our sincere thanks
I think I can safely say that without the Hawaii State Library System that there is no way my wife and I would be where we are today, working as published authors, motivational speakers and workshop leaders, helping young adults from around the world find jobs, relationships, and living situations that are a match to who they are and what they want out of life (much earlier in life than we did, and without having to take a sabbatical on a goat farm to figure it out!)
We are extremely grateful for all the help we received from libraries, and we would like to thank you for the service you provide!
Click here to find out how we want to help you.
Sincerely,
James Hood