Resume – Life
I stood mindlessly sorting clothes from the bin and, putting them away into six different shelves when it hit me that the most profound changes in my life have been internal. In astro-speak, twelfth house stuff. Even as I mulled over how much mental paradigm shifts have affected my everyday life and interactions, I got a message from a dear friend asking how this time of being actively unemployed is.
In 2001, fresh off the boat, I applied to jobs with a fervor that was infectious. I was so sure of my skill sets. I had a resume that was not padded. It ran three pages long. I knew things. I could speak about them. So, when the rejections kept mounting, I doubled and tripled my efforts in finding a job.
Fast forward twenty two years, I am now pruning my resume, removing experience that is irrelevant, deleting keywords I deem unnecessary. My resume stands at little over a page. Sparse, niche and, true to who I am.
If the naive twenty five year old me masked inadequacy with confidence, forty seven year old me is content in a self assurance that comes from experience. I now know what I am not good at, what I definitely do not want to do, what I want to spend the time that is precious to me, on.
Editing my resume last week, I realized what I really want to say has no place in a professional one pager. So, I have been writing and rewriting my life resume in my head.
In my teens, I battled self esteem issues. As an young adult, I learned resilience in relationships and in the workplace. As a young wife, I learned endurance and the ability to play the long game. As an aspiring mother, I realized there were greater forces in effect than that I could overcome by sheer will power. As a working woman, I realized every choice is prioritization. As a mother, I am learning there is no right answer to anything.
If I had to have a job hand crafted for me, it would be one where I would share freely all of those lessons life has taught me with the humility that these lessons are constantly morphing and changing me as well.
Without the energy of youth or the pressing need to be someone and do something, I am adrift at this stage, content for work to come find me, knowing full well what I am capable of and what I want to do.
Lakshmi Iyer 