I’m struggling with finding employment as a librarian in a library near where I live. There has only been one position posted so far that I have interviewed for, and I wasn’t offered that position. Now the library where I worked during school is posting a full time librarian position, and part of me thinks I should apply, and the other half of my brain is reminding me how horrible the commute down to Ann Arbor was. An eight hour work day will become a ten hour day at the least. Sometimes longer. The cost of the commute is escalating along with the cost of gas. I’d need to purchase a more fuel efficient vehicle…I might break even sometime during the first year. Maybe. Yet I enjoyed working for that library and would again enjoy working with them.

Now a full time librarian job has been posted at a town north of me. Forty miles north, the trip per map quest would be 45 minutes. There is no salary listed in this new posting, but it will be less than what is offered at my previous library, because this library is not in an affluent community. The commute would be better in the sense that I’d be going against the main flow of traffic, going north when most people go south in the morning, and coming back south when most people travel north in the evenings. When I first saw this posting I thought “GREAT!” a position just north of me. But I didn’t realize how far north.

So the question is, does it make sense to apply for the northern position for less money and about a ten minute shorter commute and NOT apply for the position that pays better but has a slightly longer (and overall more difficult) commute? Or should I not apply to either of them because they’re both too far away and wait it out to see what happens around here?

I just don’t know what to do.