OK, so about a week ago I finished Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter book. I am still reeling from the power of it, and so thankful to have had it brought to my attention. However, it ended before I had quite made sense of how to incorporate all my new
revelations into a cohesive whole, a brand or career to carry forward into the
world.
Of course,
in the end, there haven’t really been any “new” revelations at all. I have just run out of excuses (and fears). A book like LaPorte’s simply gives energetic
iteration to the message all of us have heard in a million guises: “be
yourself.” And yet those of us who, for
whatever reason, have crammed that self into a tiny box, sealed it tight and
hoped to be tossed into a trash bin somewhere – people like us need to read
such books regularly for a constant reminder. As the energetic “hit” of
the last page of an excellent book starts to fade, I can feel myself starting
to slink off to find my old box. That
Greek Chorus of negativity starts to sing: “other people can be themselves but
you cannot”; “there is no modern job or career that fits your passion and your
journey, so forget it”; “everyone else is miserable in their job. What makes you so special?”; “if you haven’t
figured it out by 59-and-three-quarters, you’re a goner.”
One of the
things that really strikes me is the utter and total disconnect between the
material that this book evoked from me, and my resume. The latter is too traditional, and I know
that. It has been utterly inadequate at
doing anything but represent the bare bones of what I’ve done: my degrees, and
the highlights of my work life at Time Magazine, teaching, running a small art
association, and office work/data entry.
(What my resume does not
highlight are my many experiences in retail, waitressing, dishwashing,
ice-cream scooping, house- and pet-sitting, and everything I have done just to
try to stay alive in recent years.) This
traditional resume long ago ceased to be effective at expressing who I am or
what I am capable of, perhaps because I had lost touch with those things myself. It barely gets me jobs of any kind any more,
and it is confusing, even to me, and feels “dead.” It represents 35 years of exile and hibernation. So to go from the high of LaPorte’s book to
thinking about my resume was demoralizing in the extreme. I almost got out the packing tape to seal my
little box up and set it out there with the garbage, again.
Fortunately,
the artist in me chose that moment to kick into high gear and breathe a little
life into the process. I knew I needed to make a collage. Not a “slap a few words and pictures on some
cardboard” collage, but a big, complex, self-portrait of me and my
passions. It took nearly a week, but
when I stood back and looked at it, it was, like, “this is me, and hell, is she
extraordinary!” I realized that this is my resume! This
is who I am!
So many potential
blog topics come to mind: the soul-deadening
aspect of trying to get a job with a written list of accomplishments; the
feminist and artistic implications of a “right brain” person not functioning
in a left brain world (creatively, I can do both equally well, but clearly the
right brain/artistic/musical/mystical/spontaneous piece is how I really operate); the
inadequacy of our traditional job market process and financial system as a
vehicle for so many of us and our unique gifts.
As we try to pour ourselves into the mold that someone else needs, we can
lose ourselves. And, heck, that’s the
point of books like these, to urge us to focus on who we are, not what people want from us.
It’s not for nothing that the word “employer” (in French) is “to use”,
and employee means, “to be used.” I
begin to understand why I’ve just been unable to fit in. Indeed, maybe I’m even strangely proud of it!
This
morning, I’m praying for the courage to get this huge collage scanned, then put
a copy of it under my name on a piece of paper. I’m praying for the
courage to call this my resume, the courage to create a web page with this image as its focus. Maybe
there are people who have been looking, literally, for what I have to offer,
looking for a unique vision and a colorful life journey. That’s a resume I’d be proud to hand out, and
which might successfully magnetize the kinds of opportunities I’d love!
