The Consultant Becomes The Client

The Futility Of Existence Can't Catch You If You Infer Your Own Meaning, Which We All Do
(which of course, you won't)

Earlier in the year I learned that it was incumbent upon me to experience the writing center from the perspective of a consultant. So I had decided to take in my resume for a good spit and a polish. Usually my resume just gets the spit.

I went to the BCC. I went there because I figured that their consultants might have a particular expertise on resumes and career development. The problem with my resume is that I have a strong background in the field of politics. The problem with that is, I no longer want to work in politics. I need to start developing a resume that accommodates my current career path.

"What kind of resume does an author/poet/storyteller put together?”, I asked myself. My career aspirations include: getting published, collecting royalties, and getting published again and doing whatever I can to keep that whole thing going. But that isn't a job you really apply for, so what do I need a resume for? It's not necesairly job I'll ever get either. Unemployment doesn't pay, at least not beyond 12 weeks. Christ! Why did I pick this profession? Is it going to be any less thankless, aimless and unrewarding than politics? Sure I like doing it and I get praise for it, but my career in politics went much the same way. Am I doomed to endless points of false starts and true failures within a grander mosaic of a lifelong factotum? It's worked for Bukowski (pun intended), but he at least got paid for his writing, but he wasn't able to live off of it until he was 50. Do I have to wait that long? What do I do until then?

All these are important questions because when writing your resume it turns out that you have to think of your career prospects said the consultant. The problem is, that a career in writing is hard to predict. I am not entirely sure what kind of employment I could or would want to acquire in the field of publishing. I could very well end up as a substitute teacher or a lumberjack until (if) I get published.

This is another conflict. I have to have both a resume for my true professional development and the jobs I intend to have in the mean time. Apparently American Apparel is less interested that I was a foreign policy advisor for a U.S. House Race and more interested that I was a waiter for three summers back in the day. Come to think about it, that hard to get and once prestigious job isn't terribly useful to me at all these days. The futility of existence overwhelms me, so I struggle to infer my own meaning. Oh, I already inferred futility. Nevermind.

The consultant said that I had a good document design going but that I had to put less on the page. It's something that I felt like I had known all along. I figured putting the most information on the page that I could fit with 10 or 12 point font was the best way to go. If they could see all the cool stuff I did, I was sure to get hired I figured. Not so. Apparently making less information more interesting is the way to go. I knew that, I used to be a speechwriter. Maybe that could be useful to mention to publishers? No? Alright.

The consultant at the BCC did exactly what I was taught to do. He evaluated my document and made marks and recommendations, but he didn't edit or proof read. More so, he taught me how to do it right on my own. I feel like I picked a new skill in resume design. I wonder if I can list that under skills in my resume?

Hmmm. No, I had better keep it short.