resume writing

I have to finish my resume by tomorrow. Indian Mom wants us all to get together and proofread each others resumes.

Here, in no particular order, is a list of things I rank higher than resume writing on my list of feel-good activities.

1. Coughing up a lung.
2. Coughing up a liver.
3. Putting a mirror on the floor and doing a belly dance over it.
4. Attempting to run for Congress.
5. As a woman.
6. As a minority woman.
7. In America.
8. Naming the belly fat rolls.
9. Walking by a construction site and getting catcalls.
10. Walking by a construction site and not getting catcalls.
11. Losing my pulse.

It's possible that I'm overreacting on this whole resume thing. After all, I'm still trying to recover from the purple virus of death that has seen fit to quash all signs of rebellion in my lungs. Being able to cough the refrain to 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' does things for one's ability to put things in perspective. All I know is, I don't want to write a resume. For three days now, ever since The Announcement -- you know, the one that basically told us we would be unemployed very soon -- I've been facing a white screen with the words 'Yuhri Karena Hirata' on top. Under that is my address and my cell phone number, not to mention the first nine letters of 'Work Experience.' Up to that point, I've done just fine with the whole Writing My Worth As A Person Down On Paper thing. It's getting any further that's got me stymied.

There's something about facing 'Work Exper' every morning that just punctures the desire to succeed. Hence the procrastination. Hence the journal entry, when I'm supposed to be doing something about finishing my resume in time for tomorrow's resume review.

It's ridiculous, of course. I've been at the company for over a year, and I know I've accomplished things during that time. I must have, or they would have fired me a long time back. I just can't think what any of that work was. I know I've learned a lot, too, because if I hadn't learned a lot, I wouldn't have made it this long. Is it a bad thing that I can't seem to bring any of this information to mind?

I don't want to write a resume. I want to meet my prospective employers cold, and charm them with my personality. I don't want them to ask me hard questions about my technical skills. I want them to be tickled by my sense of humor, blown away by my magnetic conversation, and give me a job based on my charisma alone.

Is that too much to ask?

I was talking to the Manager yesterday, when I suddenly heard a little mumbling at my elbow.

I looked down. Indian Mom's one-year old was very solemnly chewing on my chair's arm.

"Hullo, baby," I greeted him.

He gnawed away, leaving little half-moons of saliva on the seat. There was something gleeful about the grin he gave me around a mouthful of plastic, a sort of je ne sais quoi. I grinned back at him.

Children are weird.

It's been a strange few days following The Announcement; all development has stopped, and all desire to work has faded away into the nothingness, to boot. We have no direction, no focus, and no purpose to continue. As yet, we haven't even heard when our last day is going to be. Isn't that something we need to know? Upper management hasn't gotten around to determining the disposition of our unit yet, so we're left stranded, going through the motions of coming in to work and fiddling around with our resumes and job search sites until we hear something -- anything -- about what comes next.

There's bitter talk about AT&T around the office, though most of it is wry and entertaining in its way. My previous entry notwithstanding, I watch the Death Star bring its subscribers back up at a phenomenal speed and feel a certain amount of envious pride in their accomplishment. Say what you will about AT&T, they're smart. They have smart people. They know what they're doing, and they're good at what they do.

"If law offices were public, I'd invest in the lawyers representing them," someone commented cynically at luncheon. "They'll be making buckets of money from all the litigation AT&T is going to go through after this."

There's a peculiar, festive atmosphere in the offices of late, part of the Sinking Ship syndrome. Levity abounds. Parties do too, and parents are bringing their children -- newborn and otherwise -- into work so that coworkers can play with them. We wander in to work around 10:30 or 11:00 am and then toddle home at the decent hour of 3:00 pm. We go in to work for the sake of seeing our coworkers, nothing more. In the last four days, I've only been asked one work-related question.

It's a little bit too soon to start worrying about the future, for me anyway. I've got my eyes set firmly on a retail position at Fry's Electronics, which seems to me to have the potential for a whole lot of fun. Meanwhile, I'm hastily catching up with all the medical work I need to do while I have medical insurance: pelvic ultrasound for ovarian cysts, doctor's appointments for lab results, prescriptions for hormone treatments that might give me round breasts like canteloupe. (Joking about the round breasts part.) The Firecracker, who pays $4,000 a month on her mortgage, attempted to refinance and was summarily rejected by her agent.

"AGENT SAY, OH, YOU WORK EXCITE AT HOME. I HEAR ITS NOT GO SO WELL. WHAT YOU DO NEXT? AND DOCTOR, HE SAY OH, YOU WORK EXCITE AT HOME. I HEAR ITS NOT GO SO WELL, WHAT YOU DO NEXT? NOW EVERYBODY IN ENTIRE WORLD KNOW NEWS AND WANT KNOW, WHAT I DO NEXT?"

"Tell them you don't know, they're the experts, why don't they tell you?" I advised.

It's grim out there in the jobless world, or so one of our old coworkers told us. She was one of the two that were laid off two months ago; jobless still, she came back to visit today for an hour or so.

"Only one call back," she sighed, standing in the irregular huddle that my team seems to form more frequently of late. "I've sent out so many applications, I've lost count. I'm starting to think about Nordstrom or someplace."

If she's having trouble with a CIS degree from San Francisco State, it bodes ill for the rest of us. And by 'rest of us,' I mean me.

"Don't worry about it, I can take care of you," the Guy comforted, feverish on my sofa with his own case of the purple plague. "I make enough money."

I muttered darkly to myself and tromped back to my room to work on my resume.

"--IENCE. Excite@Home. Software Enginee--"

I lost my motivation and pillowed my chin in my hands to stare at my big, white, shiny computer screen. Yawn. Pencil on my desk; I poked the screen with the eraser end of it, and made a smudge over the letter 'O' in 'WORK.' Ho hum.

After half an hour I drifted back to the living room to see what the Guy was doing. He was busy playing his way through a feudal Japan Playstation 2 game. For some mysterious reason, the samurai he was playing was wearing a massive panda suit, straight out of Nippon Disneyland's creature wardrobe. A little baby panda was dangling from a pouch on the panda samurai's belly, flopping its little arms around with excitement.

I watched him smite several VR demons with a glowing samurai sword, then went back to work on my resume.

"--r. Redwood City, CA. Programmed things."

This ain't going well. Posted by yhirata at December 6, 2001 11:12 PM