The Project - Day 10

I’m in the process of trying to create a new resume, again, and it has to fall someplace between cleaning out old files and scrubbing grout with a toothbrush on my list of favorite things to do. I hate the whole balancing act between “this is what I’ve done” and “this is what I can do” and showing your fabulous experience and skills and yet not overstating them at the same time. I feel like the whole thing is so fake, no matter how honest I am, I always feel like I’m overstating the truth.

I remarked to someone this year that rather than writing a resume or bio, I longed to just write “I don’t suck and I know what I’m doing. Give me a job already.” I suppose it might be different if my life had a more normal trajectory. Go to school, get job in related field, take advanced degree, get better job, etc. It’s a little hard to put down on paper how you spent 20 years trying to pursue a career with only a 5% success rate, so in the meantime you learned how to do everything short of working a psychic hotline to earn money. The upside? I have tremendous confidence in my ability to work, build skills and learn new things. The downside is that my resume looks like it belongs to a schizophrenic chimpanzee. And by this I mean no disrespect to schizophrenics or chimpanzees.

Most people transition at some point when they are going for a creative career and it is time to turn practical. My transition was to get married and pregnant, which was awesome for my life, but has turned out to be employment suicide. I feel fortunate that the people who know me and love me constantly remind me that I am (mostly) not a moron and that I have many useful skills, because if I saw myself as an extension of my resume I think I’d never make it out of the bathroom in the morning. I know reinvention is possible and I’m ready for it. As hard as it is to say, okay, I had a so-called dream, I went for it the best way I knew how for over 15 years, it didn’t work out, I’m ready to see what else is out there. I have a family now, I have a child, I have responsibilities to something bigger than my ego or my talent or whatever and it’s time to get creative in a way that will pay bills and put groceries on the table.

Actually that really hurts. That really, really hurts. Because when they say you will regret what you didn’t try, they are right. I will always second guess, always wonder if I could have made a different choice and made a better success of myself at this point in my life. Not that I would trade my current life with husband and child for a successful career, but I do hope that my kid doesn’t grow up and think mom just shit her life away for 15 years until he was born. I look back at the choices I made and I don’t regret any of them and I don’t see where I might have made different decisions, but I’m sure those moments were there and I didn’t even recognize them. Maybe in another 15 years I’ll have some clarity or at least perspective.

So, it’s time to reinvent. Time to imagine something new to be when I grow up. Time to focus on what is needed and not what is wanted and that is okay. I think. Just give me a minute. I need some time to figure out how to put it in a resume, how to say it wasn’t just that I flitted from job to job, always looking for the opportunity with the most return on the least commitment. Rather I would say, I had a lot of big ideas and some oversized dreams and I made some very brave and yes, maybe stupid choices, but I took risks and learned new things. The resume that lists my jobs is nothing, it tells you nothing about me. The resume of my heart, of my life, of the path I’ve been on for the last twenty years, this is what you need to know about me and what I must learn to communicate.