Note from the Associate Editorial Director: Who R U?
by Melissa Varnavas
In Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney’s 1951 adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s beloved book, Alice visits a caterpillar sitting atop a mushroom, smoking. The caterpillar asks, “Who R U?” in smoke rings while Alice stammers that she hardly knows anymore. “I’ve changed so many times since this morning you see,” she explains.
No doubt we all feel a bit like Alice these days. CDI programs have changed in a heartbeat, it seems. Some have gone home to work permanently. Some have gone home, been asked to return to the hospital, and then been sent home again. At month six, I finally broke down and bought myself a big-girl desk and made my spare bedroom my permanent home office home, where my Cheshire cat, Katrina, loves to lounge.
CDI focus areas have been challenged. Some have grown. Some CDI specialists have been furloughed or lost treasured colleagues to staff reductions. Some have suffered even greater due to the pandemic.
The pandemic isn’t the only change catalyst today, either. ACDIS recently created a Diversity and Inclusion Task Force which met this week for the first time and will be working to develop its scope of work in the coming weeks. (If you’d like more information about this group or to volunteer, email ACDIS Director Brian Murphy at bmurphy@acdis.org.)
There’s been so much change, that a nice cup of tea with a clean cup sounds practically perfect just about now.
Now, I’m not admitting that I’m the Mad Hatter (although I do have quite the hat collection and I’ve dressed the part for a Halloween event or two), but I have been trying to keep the proverbial ACDIS table set with layer cake and tea (news and networking) for our CDI cast of characters via Facebook Live Meet Up Mondays weekly chats since April. I will admit there are some days where I do feel a bit mad, flubdubbing my way through technological trials, re-taking sessions due to sound problems, re-taping videos because the sound is fine but the screen is blank.
Talking to myself.
And, as I’ve said many times before, I’m not a lover of public speaking. But we all have to reinvent ourselves. We all have to adapt to the needs of our community, stretch our imaginations, change.
So, we’re changing up the format of our Meet Up Mondays to open the dialogue a bit. During these new sessions we’ll bring in some of the ACDIS staff to share what they’re working on, visit with some of our ACDIS volunteers to hear about their contributions to the profession, meet our fellow ACDIS members to find out more about them.
In short, we’ll look to answer the caterpillar’s question of our colleagues: “Who R U?” and how has this moment in time changed and challenged you.
The question the caterpillar puts before Alice is profound at any age or level, but I’d also like to ask you to take a moment and sit with it yourselves. Those working in the CDI field, our ACDIS members, are a passionate people. Many of you, so many of you, have told us in our “Meet a Member” articles and in casual conversations that you found your calling when you found CDI. If who you are in your professional life is a person passionate about CDI, I’d like to encourage you to bring that passion forward in some small measure by getting a little more involved either on the local level through your local chapter, sharing your questions, concerns, thoughts on the ACDIS Forum, applying to speak at one of our virtual or in-person events, or applying for the ACDIS Leadership Council (which closes for new applicants on August 21).
And if you’d like to join me for coffee or tea to bravely share your answer to the caterpillar’s question, please shoot me an email and let me know, because as Alice says, “Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Editor’s note: Varnavas is the associate editorial director for ACDIS. Contact her at mvarnavas@acdis.org .
