Battling Imagined Isolation

The acquisitions librarian is often isolated among her fellow librarian peers. I experienced this at my former job, where I was one of two librarians in my unit. Often, there is only one librarian, the situation I'm in now. Various networks are created through meetings with various councils, task forces, etc., here on campus and more widely in our consortia/campus systems. This is an attempt to foster bonds but only accomplishes that on a certain level. Other than that, librarians are divided up into groups. Bibliographers have their subject-related teams, catalogers can team up together, systems folks have the geek bond going with or without MLISs.

An additional factor that is coming to bear on my isolation is the trend of the "graying of the profession". That is, a lot of my organizational peers are not my chronological peers. They are quite nice people, and we work very well together, but no chumminess has developed yet. Those who are my age-peers are divided off by the groups described in the paragraph above. Am I secretly wishing for accelerated retirements so that I can have a lunch companion?

Of course, these feelings may also be coming up because a lot of people are on vacation, and/or just about to leave for ALA. Did I mention that I'm not going to Orlando? Maybe I just feel like I'm home in curlers while everyone else is partying.