The Gap is quite pithy

Wrote my resume today. Because if I’m not going to monetize this blog, some other part of my life is going to have to be monetized. Weird how the word “monetize” has so quickly taken hold in my vocabulary.

Objective: “I am seeking a writing position that will allow me scheduling flexibility and the ability to work from home.”

Recent Experience was tricky, as I have spent a long time in the volunteer sector. Although it turns out I have done a hell of a lot of excellent stuff for which no one has paid me one dime in the past 10 and a half years.

Other Experience (meaning pre-kid stuff for which I was paid) was easier, but made me realize yet again how I have failed to live up to my early promise and potential. So that was fun.

The Gap is the problem.  By “The Gap,” I mean the missing 4 year chunk of time after graduating from law school and before the birth of Maj for which I can’t really account. I generally gloss over this part of my life when talking with people, or sometimes, if asked direct personal questions, I just plain out lie.  The truth is messy.  Let see . . . during this time, I . . . quickly realized that I didn’t want to actually be an attorney at a law firm; tried my hand at contracting out to a few smaller firms, which I found I hated; tried to write a book, whose pages taunted me with their persistent emptiness; tried to write poetry, which tended toward the overwrought “woe-is-me” end of the literary spectrum and for which there was no market whatsoever; tried my hand at a variety of other endeavors too stupid and short-lived to mention here; and then settled into a deep depression (in spirit as well as in the couch) in which it seemed that nothing would ever go right again.

None of the connections I made during this time are people with whom I still have contact, and they quite possibly don’t remember me except in less than flattering terms. Sooooo . . . as I typed my resume, I pretended there was some sort of wobble in the time-space continuum and continued blithely on as though those years didn’t happen. They were hard years.

Which means that the empty space on my resume between the end of 1995 and 1999 is actually quite pithy. Invisible, but fraught with emotion.

Potential employers will get that, right?

Education went fine. Did I mention that I have a lot of it? It looks good on paper if not in person.

And then I sent it off to a gentleman looking for a “SEO/Writer, Content Assistant.” Which I assume is bloggish/internet-ish in nature. Moment of panic when I thought for just a moment that I had sent him an unedited version (which would have sooooo screwed up my hoped-for first impression as a competent and organized person). I will keep you posted.

In other financial news, my father-in-law, who I love dearly and to whom I have mentioned my recent desire to get hired to write something, sent me an emailed suggestion yesterday with a hyperlink to an opportunity to write 5 reviews of Meijer’s products in exchange for a “$5.00 off your next $40.00 purchase at Meijer’s” coupon. His suggestion was that I write the reviews, he would spend the money, and I would get a “cut.”

After factoring in his “cut,” that’s less than $1.00 a review in discount coupons to a store at which I cannot even shop, as Meijer’s can be found in only a few mid-western states. After pointing all of this out to my father-in-law, I fired him as my agent.

He thought that was pretty funny. I emailed him again and told him he could stay on as my publicist, which he accepted. We then got down to the terms of his employment, and I informed him that “Payment for said publicist services will be in the way of Meijer’s coupons good for a small percentage off your next purchase of $40.00 or more.”

He responded by sending out the link to this blog to all of his family and friends. I love him.

Someone else who is a fan of my yearly Christmas letters told me today that reading this blog is like getting a “Christmas letter again and again.” Which made me think worriedly back to a video the girls used to love called Elmo Saves Christmas in which Santa unwisely grants furry red Elmo three wishes. Elmo uses one of those wishes to wish that it be “Christmas every day!” From that point on, things go just as badly as you might expect, as all of the anticipation and excitement and build-up of Christmas just becomes tiresome and boring and burdensome when it happens every day.

So don’t think of this blog as “Christmas every day,” but as “Kris every day.”

And who couldn’t use a little more Kris in their lives?

Off to do some excellent parenting of my two crabby daughters.