Resuming the Resume

Last Thursday, I found myself in an awkward conversation with a frantic co-worker who needed to update her resume for a fast approaching promotional opportunity. I could feel the tension on her fingertips. Job hunting would never happen to me and I felt relieved. Why? No presiding need. I haven’t updated my resume in over a decade and I haven’t applied for a single job in over fourteen years.

I recognize that I am a rare breed at my worksite. Most people are not like me. Working among more than a fair share of malcontents, I have job satisfaction. I would call it a 9 on a satisfaction scale of 1-10 with a point withheld for minor garden variety complaining. Some might call my stewardship as nothing but static servitude while I prefer to label it as contentment.

Yesterday, I stumbled across a part time job advertisement in journalism. The embedded irony in Freudian Slips would have it no other way. The Courier Post newspaper is seeking a columnist for a small weekly feature about people and places in my county. My blog is a testament of stories about people and places in my community anyway. So no different than my colleague and little different than my blog, I sat down tonight and scrambled to update my dusty outdated resume. The resume building proved to be the easy part. The requirement of supplying three writing samples gave me excruciating pain in the temples. It took me an hour to update my resume and an additional two hours to languish over the writing samples. If humor and snap decision making is in any way counted against applicants, I may not have the write stuff.