Resume Blues

Yikes!

I knew I forgot something. I failed to remember I had a blog.

And in my compact little life, crowded with so much ephemera, somethings just slip thru the cracks.

I never returned to Toastmasters, but instead focused all my energies on the community college classes in Excel and Word I am taking. And I really like these classes, and look forward to them being the centerpiece of my upcoming resume.

I have been looking at the templates of resumes that are loaded into Word 2007, and I realized, whoa...things have really changed since I lost my last resume when I got rid of the computer it was on two computers ago.

Instead of just doing a page of employment history with a short objective and misc. skills...a resume is now a piece of salesmanship where on can hide a multitude of deficits. For example, I have set an ambitious goal of finding something of a temp job in an office, where no one will notice me....and I can toil remarkably doing something wonderful with Word or Excel. And trying to come up with an explanation of what I was doing for the last ten years is a challenge. An exciting challenge. One which will make me a super employee and better person when I finally get it right.

Or I hire someone from an online service to give me a passable resume which allow me to get a humble position where I can toil in relative serenity creating fabulous spreadsheets and terrific documents using my truly amazing skills with Office 2003.

I will ponder this resume challenge more. And at last, plunge into the terror and mystery of explaining myself to people who, in the end, don't care. (nor should they.)


In other news having a cat with renal failure is a career itself. Maybe I can market myself as someone who visits the homes of people who have cats with kidney problems, where I can do thing with the Ringers infusions....while showing off my ability to get a quarter tab of Pepsid AC down the gullet of a sick but uncooperative cat!

Oh yeah. It is Mother's Day.

I will celebrate my dear son not getting killed on his new motorcycle. While wondering if I will ever live to see grandchildren.

Woe is me.

Presidents's Day

It is raining. It is a holiday.

But I gotta do one thing to towards my goal of getting a job.


Hmmm.

I got it. I am visualizing my resume. I am choosing the font and layout. I am thinking about my cover letter.

I am trying like crazy to figure out a way to capsulize thirty years of old career into something less interesting.

Maybe I can teach other people how to dumb down a resume.

And come up with strategies on how to avoid the stink of desperation while balancing that with pointers on how not to appear too cocky. I got it.

You have appear to be very, very interested in listening to what the interviewer is saying and mirror back what they asking. Hey......just like grant writing.

This is fun. I am getting the hang of it already.

How to Make a Plan

I have never been much of a believer in plans.

But they do serve a purpose and they do keep you busy. And they allow one to think in ways where one doesn't go from zero to full panic mode when sorting out what to do next. (while waiting for something to turn up. Wilkins Micawber is my co-pilot.)

List making is a good way to begin. I have decided I will come up with one good idea a day and put it on a list. I called a friend of mine, and she mentioned Toastmasters. All at once, that struck me as an excellent idea. Public speaking has always been a major fear of mine. So I resolved to go to an open meeting up the street from me next Wednesday. EXCELLENT.

Then someone else mentioned it might be a good idea to take class in Excel.

Absolutely! My spreadsheet skills are really modest. And having some kind of certification with Excel would look swell on my modest new resume.

And then if I regularly post on my blog that might give the feeling of moving forward, right?


The entire point of this is that in the past it has been my experience that good ideas come from spitballing all kinds of weird stuff. And maybe being stuck in obsessing on my disastrous first steps, I can focus on packaging and marketing myself in a way where I set my goals a little bit higher.

So. If what I am doing isn't a plan. It is a preplan. Which a very important part of planning. Which sounds like a plan.