1. I like filing.
2. Lifting records center cartons onto high shelves gives me a much-needed triceps workout.
3. The constant threat of papercuts makes me feel like I’m living life on the edge!
4. Steering a rickety wooden cart piled high with early 19th century documents around a hairpin turn gives me a thrill like nothing else.
5. I care about everybody’s great-great-great grandmother.
6. I secretly like Hilary Jenkinson and all his old-fashioned idealism.
7. Archivists make, like, a ton of money. Right?
8. I’ll never, NEVER organize my apartment, but when I see a box of papers shoveled out of someone’s attic, I catch myself subconsciously beginning to organize them into series.
9. I like to know that my hands have touched history, that I’ve helped provide a window into the lives of the world’s movers and shakers, and possibly helped to give voice to the voiceless. I recognize that a will, a school record, a letter, or a medical examination might be the only tangible remaining record of an entire life, and I am the person who decides to preserve it.
10. Or I must just really like filing.
