A series of major shocks hit me over the past 10 months or so which have shaken my level of engagement and have led to me to question why I am giving so much of myself to this new work.While I still believe in the value of the work I have done this far, some days I wonder if I have it in me to continue.Something had blinded me to the fact that at my library I am a voice calling in the wilderness, or maybe even more accurately, the proverbial tree falling in the forest.I really don’t know if anyone hears me and/or, if they do, if they understand or care.The first shock hit when I prepared a file to have my work, including my book, considered for merit.For those not familiar with the process, librarians can make a report of their work and achievements over the past year and argue that what they have done is meritorious and, if their peers judge the work to be of value, will receive a raise in pay.Being the only professional cataloguer at my library, I have the sole responsibility for implementing RDA and training library assistants in it as well as keeping up to date with all of the changes, setting up WorldShare metadata manager, and doing all of the other duties which are often split among librarians at other universities.Despite having a heavy load, I was actually able to make considerable progress.I had my book published last year, published a number of articles, spoke at conferences, received recognition from my cataloging peers at other libraries, etc.I felt that I had the strongest merit case of my career to date.I was shocked when I did not receive any merit whatsoever.I was even more shocked when I found out that my colleagues got merit for media appearances, LibGuides, blog posts, and a handful of articles published.I had created a LibGuide too but didn’t even report it because it just didn’t seem like a big deal.The same was true for my blog posts.At my library reasons are only given for why merit was given as opposed to why it wasn’t given.The sort answer is, I suppose, that my work lacks merit.However, when I spoke to a librarian about why certain achievements in my file were overlooked, her reply was “nobody cares”.Then as it began to sink in that RDA was going to continue to change, a new FRBR model was in the works and it seemed that new guidelines such as those for cataloging music kept popping up and then changing, I decided that I should begin to push more strongly to have another professional librarian who would also follow the changes and developments and so that it would not all fall on me.At that point I was trying to question why I was spending money out of pocket for training and as well as my nights and weekends doing work when “nobody cares”.The second shock came when I was told that my work is “just not important enough” to justify adding another librarian and that I should just stop doing some of the work that I am doing if I can’t keep up. The latter phrase is something that I have heard since I first suggested that maybe we should have more than one professional cataloging/metadata librarian way back in 2013.I went around in shock for a few days after I received that message and then decided to ask for clarification in terms of whether or not the intent was to tell me that my work was unimportant.The clarification I received was that my work is unimportant relative to all of the other things that the library needs to achieve.This hit me particularly hard.Then, just a few weeks later an announcement that the library would hire a third systems librarian was announced.After that I was basically told that I would just tell the systems department what all of the new standards are and that they would “decide” how to implement them.I remember riding the bus home wondering how this all would work and wondered how a programmer could select a system where I would create NACO records after I “explain the standards”.I asked for clarification as to how this could be possible and I was told that they are “responsible for the systems” and they need to “make the decisions”.It then occurred to me that my colleagues really didn’t understand my work.The library assistants whom I had been teaching RDA for the last 3 years get it but I don’t think that anyone else does.A series of other minor shockwaves continued to rumble through my work days and I can definitely say that for the first time in my life I have entered a condition of disengagement.