Your Professional Persona in Two Pages or Less

I hate writing resumes. It's a process I can't get right. And one that's only gotten more painful and more difficult over the years that I haven't been a bona fide careerist...

You see, my work/employment/professional life hasn't been linear like a normal, career-oriented person's so my resume's rather strange. It is more a collection of strange occupations and stellar achievements.

This happened because I had no "career path" when I started working in my late teens. My teachers and guidance counselor were all on my back about going to college, and I had to keep saying "no." I was too ashamed to tell them that my parents didn't want me to go to college, so I took it upon myself and said it was my decision not to go to college.

Actually, I wasn't allowed to go to college because I didn't want to go into nursing. Or so I was told. The real reason I wasn't allowed to go to college is that my father and mother didn't know about Financial Aid and didn't want to spend the money on college.

It was all about the money--not about the future. My future.

So, I had to get A Job. Any Job. Just so my father wouldn't calling me a bum, throwing it in my face that he was still supporting me and could therefore control my life.

It was always about controlling my life. There was a tug of war between my parents over what I would be when I grew up. She wanted me to be a nurse because she wasn't. He wanted me to go into accounting and finance because he couldn't. It was about their unrealized dreams and their projections. I was to be either the reflection of her or the reflection of him.

Neither won that battle.

But the struggle left me kind of in a no-man's land, unable to decide who I want to be and unable to define my "dream job" because there was always a fear of Divine Parental Retribution. I could be Disowned any minute. Both my parents were known for holding grudges a very, very long time.

As it is, my father resents my graduating college. There is still an awful power struggle between us and I know that he feels that college leads to unemployment and failure. My achievements have exceeded his achievements, and that is cause to keep reminding me that I'm nothing without his money...

In my late 20's, I ended up in non-profit finance and as the associate editor of a three volume project because of some Divine Intervention that lead me to a job at a theological research institute.

The stress of living double, even triple lives at times, working multiple jobs, and having a manipulative and emotionally abusive husband all lead to a massive system crash.

I got a very bad Epstein-Barr infection when I was 33 and ended up sidelined with Chronic Fatigue for several years.

Yet in those years, boy-oh-boy! Did I achieve! I achieved so much! I achieved more than Carter had little liver pills (to use a very old adage). I crocheted myself into a stupor, went to school full-time, excelled in English and in mathematics, tutored part-time, maintained a household and endured so much emotional garbage I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming with Night Terrors.

I thought it was the Chronic Fatigue. Or bad childhood memories. I couldn't admit at the time that it was an emotionally abusive husband.

It is shameful for me now to admit that someone kept me so crazy for so many years. But, what did I know? He was a lot like my father in many, many ways. And covered up his behavior like my father--singing and laughing and making jokes.

I was always told that my father loved me, even when he was trying to torque me every way from Sunday on an emotional level. So, it seemed pretty normal when my husband was doing the same thing.

But I digress...

Back to the Achievements! Oh, gosh! I was able to take the minutest molehill and make it into a grand mountain. Every endeavor I undertook, I built into something stupendous. Everywhere I went I left behind far more than what was ever expected of me.

That's good resume fodder though! And has lead to some excellent references.

What good, though, are the references, and the good wishes of former advisors, when you're a mid-life career changer demonstrating no discernible career path but with a heckofalot of Really Neat-o achievements?

And why in the world did I spend so much time achieving?

Achievements are ways of sticking it to people who want to control you. They're little beacons of freedom. There. You can take away most of me, but you can't take away what I've achieved.

Achieving is also a great way of staying one step ahead of shame and of creating a freewheeling persona that is not defined by a one-note self-description. It's a way of creating a series of incredible personality traits that make the absence of unconditional love a bit easier to digest.

Although when I look at my resume and see all those achievements, I wonder who that woman is who did all that stuff...I'll admit I'm kind of fuzzy...I'd like to be better defined. I just don't want to be caged.

So, the latest revision to my Two Page Professional Persona (because, after all, how much of who you actually are can you get on two crummy pages) includes my latest achievements: the blogs. Y'all might think that's a bit strange, but I've plowed a whole bunch of energy into this whole blogging thing recently and I'm finding myself places that I might not be in a conventional career. Not that blogging's a career, mind you--or that I'm making any money at it at this point. Yet where I've been, what I've learned, what I've seen over the past six months, and what I am about to do in the very near future are results of throwing myself into this little subculture. (or have I thrown myself against it like a speeding car into a brick wall--I'm not sure.)

I thought all this blogging just might lead to some writing jobs. Or *something* new, different and interesting. I figured, too, if I achieved again, that some sort of path would appear this time--a path I might like and enjoy because it might offer limitless abilities to learn and to keep achieving.

But there was no Master Plan, really. No major Intention. No Bulletproof Success Scenario. Just a desire for knowledge and achievement and for somebody to read me.

To know all these little words strung together weren't totally meaningless, that they, and me, made sense somewhere, to someone.

However, doing the freelancer's dogpaddle right now is frustration to the nth degree.

So, while the resume, with all its achievements in so many different places and fields is necessary for me to present myself to those folks who just might give me a writing job or some other interesting job, it remains The Bane of my meager existence. I still feel that when potential employers look at my resume, they're going to say "oh, well, she's done a lot of stuff...but there's no discernible profession or career path."

When do creativity, the ability to think independently, and to achieve become assets rather than liabilities? When does one transcend that career wasteland where independent thinking is no longer verboten?

Then again, maybe there are no answers because all I have to offer is an incomplete Two Page Persona...