I have been staring at my Resume for quite a while now. Not the best use of a Saturday evening, but then, what else have I got to do? Weekends are a social construct, created solely for the employed. So here I go, parsing from end to end, working all the way down from the summary on Page 1 to the list of references three pages later. It has been the same funk; pick a spot to add a bunch of detail, or turn of phrase, wait awhile as if the ink needed to dry first, then hurriedly hit Backspace to get rid of it all. Looks like it is all in there, yet eerily incomplete. Blather in active or passive voice, is still, just that. Even a machine would conk off if tasked with writing its own brochure and service history. I tried doing this at a waking hour, late in the night or with and without some Bourbon in me. Nothing seems to work. I need to focus. This late afternoon surge is fueled by coffee, for a change.
As ever, the head-hunter wanted me to 'rehash it a bit' as it 'held promise' for a 'role’ at a ‘prominent client' of theirs. I have 'heard' those 'words' so many 'times' over the last year or who is counting, it has long since stopped evoking pessimism, gallows humor or sighs. I just know she just assigned me homework, and like a sullen teenager (whenever was I that young anyway, feels like I was born forty-five) I'm at it under protest. Reformat, rephrase, never say 'embellish' as it gives the game away. Attach it to an online form, and then for some reason, key it all again into the next page of same form. Slap on a Covering Letter, lest the topless contents scandalize modesty. Hit Send. Then wait for lightning to strike.
It is a copy of the original that I've been slaving over. I should have just updated the one she had marked up. But could not shake the fear that I would screw it up, vandalizing an ancient relic while trying to restore it. These chills often creep up on me, my heart starts racing and body flinches at the imaginary buzzing of a swarm. Which reminds me, my anxiety medication is due a refill. My luck is due a refill. Mental health is a social construct, affordable only to the employed.
The summary reads like a criminal record. In a fair world it might even be considered one. All the pointless things I set my mind to, cheered, fretted, and often got an ulcer over, as life happened around me. That's almost thirty years and four months of working for money. What a colossal waste of time.
So, what did I do recently? What did I do? Well, for starters, my last ‘brand name’ employers gently set me downhill by firing me at the very start of the pandemic. While the world was wondering whether chicken soup and/or brandy worked as prophylaxis, my employers of nearly a decade, had very uncharacteristically managed to see the Future. A Future with the virus, a Future in suspended animation. Also, a Future without me, along with a few hundred others packed off weeks before the first alumnus would succumb to the plague. Now, that's uncanny foresight. Got to hand it to them. Come to think of it, they should be hooting that from every damn rooftop. That they haven’t yet is self-effacing humility bordering on the cute.
I was told repeatedly that the Organization was in considerable pain owing to the decision to let us go. Over the phone where they broke the news along with the usual passive-aggressive boilerplate, in the Termination Letter short of a Crying Face Emoji and then the oh-so-predictable Press Statement. Pain, presumably from where they had to stick all those pink slips. Repeatedly. Heaven forbid a bad Quarter should befall the firm. The virus may be cruel to mortals, but can you imagine the beating the stock would take?
Then there’s The Gap. The indelicate term head-hunters use while referring to the virus-pocked years. I stayed mostly indoors, mostly healthy, mostly alone and mostly without steady pay. I lost my job twice, my home for good, visitation rights (I can’t even), and almost my sanity. I’ve been in and out of jobs, some just to keep the wheels turning. I’ve been selected multiple times never to hear from those folks again, let go as businesses folded, had at least one horrible video interview fiasco that led to rejection. I was even offered a position where I was passed over earlier, as their eventual pick died of the virus a few weeks in. It is not as much a gap in my CV, as bullet holes left by an automatic. Tragic, explainable, yet somehow unmentionable detail on my professional summary, as true Résumé connoisseurs abhor any vacuum. Any blip is to be sandpapered into the background. Like some Court Historian sneaking away any mention of the Royal Concubine from posterity. Seems to be an industry norm. Passed down from antiquity; I'm sure some hapless survivor of Pompeii would have been made to explain away that inconvenience.
Now back to the document. I simply cannot seem to edit this anymore. "It is a story that we're telling" as one particularly unhelpful recruiter recently chimed. The catchphrases set to snag onto any resume search are not amenable to creative writing; expertise in Java and Java expert are both the same. And untrue, either way. I’ve never coded in decades, at least not since my third job. That one was short on pay but long on life lessons. I left the job and that City to nurse a heartbreak. Never been there since. I’m little over a decade removed from being “sixty-four”, but there used to be a rather fetching Beatles fan who loved to hum that tune with me.
I digress, and that’s the whole deal. It is not only that the well-worn resume has little give for creative flourish; they are tuned and taut from years of “story-telling”, paeans to my glory (of course, all under relentless fire), couched in the most environmental-friendly humble-brag in the market. Every line’s a winner. I also walk with each line into the past. Of years, spending almost every waking hour creating this celebration of mediocrity that my life seems now. Instead, I could have loved, listened, traveled, been more reasonable, been more available, been more Dad. Every line’s a loser.
In the time the world was at a standstill, I gave all I could, while taking only what I needed. I volunteered, raised money, gave money when I had, clapped for cops & caregivers, ran errands for neighbors, stood in line to get my share at the food-bank, stood in line to unload trucks at the Care Home, ached with the vaccine, wept it didn't come sooner. I lost money, I lost touch, I lost friends and neighbors, just like countless across the world would have. I miss not being able to spend more easily, I miss those who passed, I miss being ‘busy’. I miss the old life I had. Even top-shelf booze. Yet, do I want everything back? Or, for that matter, anything back as before? I've never felt so devoid of worry in like forever; not the money worry, that I got plenty. The working person’s worry: worry I might not measure up at work, my raise, the next appraisal, the daily 'stand-up' call, the snarky client. Don’t care anymore.
Everything ends. I need to find something that makes the rest of my days worthwhile.
There’s no gap in my resume. The resume is the gap.
