THE GAPS IN MY RESUME'
These days, everybody has a resume. Most people make a point of keeping it up to date and ready to send out at a drop of the job market. Google “resume'” and literally thousands of websites will pop up on how to write one, where to send it, and what to do next. I look at mine, and marvel at its utterly linear monotony. It does exactly what it is supposed to do. It keeps my name and address from being circular-filed for jobs I really qualify for. It’s supposed to be the trajectory of a career. At least at my age, it’s supposed to be an ever-accumulating catalog of accomplishments. And, yes, here they are, sort of.
But what isn’t there is both the really interesting stuff, and my own enthusiasm for the stuff that looks boring. Nothing at all about the roads not taken. Nothing at all about my having turned down a role in an Equity company play when I was just out of college, or an offer to be lead singer for a group called the Electric Underwear when I was in grad school.
And nothing about what I was doing while doing the Official Job stuff—making a respectable second income as a free-lance writer, taking care of a disabled family member, keeping a small religious congregation organized, helping my father and my aunt through their retirement and final illnesses and dealing with the loose ends of their estates, doing the same thing for my in-laws, playing guitar in one of the very first proto-neo-klezmer groups, integrating the “men’s bar” at a local flagship department stores, raising a foster daughter through her teen years and after, helping get my kid brother through the devastating first years after our mother died—you get the idea.
Not even much about the meaning of the Official Jobs themselves. One lists me as the director of the midwest office of a small nonprofit, providing information and research to lawyers and paraprofessionals in a rather esoteric field of law. Actually, what I was doing—what I and everybody who knew me believed I was doing—was helping to end the war in Vietnam. Another lists me as a staff member of a legal organization that provided similar information to attorneys in the area of family law. Well, yes, I did that. In the process I helped write the first version of the domestic violence law in our state.
For a while I was a federal law enforcement official—which really meant I was trying to keep crud out of the waters of the United States while the folks in Washington were trying to keep us from being too successful, by reorganizing our office and chain of command every four months or so. And while doing it, I was dealing with a life-threatening health crisis in my own family. No prospective boss is ever going to know about any of this.
Will anybody? These days, our local paper (the Chicago Tribune) has a wonderful policy of writing really interesting obituaries about ordinary people. I don’t know if other papers are doing it too, but it’s really neat to celebrate the amazing things ordinary people do with their lives. I guess that’s where all the stuff that doesn’t show up in our resumes will show up. But wouldn’t it be great to be able to show it to the people whose paths we cross while we’re still alive?
Alas, no, not necessarily. Showing one’s real self to a prospective boss is a sure way either to never get hired, or to hold the job only long enough for the boss to find somebody less visibly interesting. There are no dull lives. There are no dull people—being interesting is part of being made in the image of the Holy Blessed One. But there are organizations and even whole societies and cultures in which one is required to appear dull, and to be enthusiastic about very dull things. It’s the interesting things that get in the way of the Ordinary Course of Business. It’s the interesting things that make the utterly predictable dullness of imagined robots look better and better to the corporate world.
At the beginning of a journey, and at its end, we tend to look curiously at the map. On the road, we are usually too busy driving. So here I am, near the end of the journey, looking at my resume' and being absolutely certain that it is not all there is, and wishing wishing wishing that it were not all there is of my social/public/work self.
But what isn’t there is both the really interesting stuff, and my own enthusiasm for the stuff that looks boring. Nothing at all about the roads not taken. Nothing at all about my having turned down a role in an Equity company play when I was just out of college, or an offer to be lead singer for a group called the Electric Underwear when I was in grad school.
And nothing about what I was doing while doing the Official Job stuff—making a respectable second income as a free-lance writer, taking care of a disabled family member, keeping a small religious congregation organized, helping my father and my aunt through their retirement and final illnesses and dealing with the loose ends of their estates, doing the same thing for my in-laws, playing guitar in one of the very first proto-neo-klezmer groups, integrating the “men’s bar” at a local flagship department stores, raising a foster daughter through her teen years and after, helping get my kid brother through the devastating first years after our mother died—you get the idea.
Not even much about the meaning of the Official Jobs themselves. One lists me as the director of the midwest office of a small nonprofit, providing information and research to lawyers and paraprofessionals in a rather esoteric field of law. Actually, what I was doing—what I and everybody who knew me believed I was doing—was helping to end the war in Vietnam. Another lists me as a staff member of a legal organization that provided similar information to attorneys in the area of family law. Well, yes, I did that. In the process I helped write the first version of the domestic violence law in our state.
For a while I was a federal law enforcement official—which really meant I was trying to keep crud out of the waters of the United States while the folks in Washington were trying to keep us from being too successful, by reorganizing our office and chain of command every four months or so. And while doing it, I was dealing with a life-threatening health crisis in my own family. No prospective boss is ever going to know about any of this.
Will anybody? These days, our local paper (the Chicago Tribune) has a wonderful policy of writing really interesting obituaries about ordinary people. I don’t know if other papers are doing it too, but it’s really neat to celebrate the amazing things ordinary people do with their lives. I guess that’s where all the stuff that doesn’t show up in our resumes will show up. But wouldn’t it be great to be able to show it to the people whose paths we cross while we’re still alive?
Alas, no, not necessarily. Showing one’s real self to a prospective boss is a sure way either to never get hired, or to hold the job only long enough for the boss to find somebody less visibly interesting. There are no dull lives. There are no dull people—being interesting is part of being made in the image of the Holy Blessed One. But there are organizations and even whole societies and cultures in which one is required to appear dull, and to be enthusiastic about very dull things. It’s the interesting things that get in the way of the Ordinary Course of Business. It’s the interesting things that make the utterly predictable dullness of imagined robots look better and better to the corporate world.
At the beginning of a journey, and at its end, we tend to look curiously at the map. On the road, we are usually too busy driving. So here I am, near the end of the journey, looking at my resume' and being absolutely certain that it is not all there is, and wishing wishing wishing that it were not all there is of my social/public/work self.
posted by WiredSisters at 11:03 AM
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