There's lots of talk about budget deficits. But the humor deficit, arguably easier to address, is raging out of control. There are way too many people taking themselves way too seriously. People seriously need to lighten up.
You see it in Charlie Rangel's pissy response to Luke Russert's question, "What are you going to do if you lose your job?" You see tea partiers being unintentionally funny when they hoist photos of President Obama sporting a Hitler 'stache.
I've been known to laugh at comedy that excoriates people, especially when it's aimed at politicians and celebrities who have started to believe in their own hype. But there's a special place in my heart for comics who use themselves as the subject and object of their humor. Dave Chappelle is a genius at this. Chris Rock of "Everybody Hates Chris" fame also uses self-deprecation to great effect.
I'd like to add another to the list, Greg Keeler, one of my English professors at Montana State. He ought to be better known than he is, because he is one of the funniest people on the planet. He teaches poetry, and he's also turned his talented hand to writing songs in the cowboy poet tradition. The first time I met Greg was at a retreat at the Lake Yellowstone Hotel the week before my first semester at MSU. I was slightly older than most of the other students, and the professors had already heard Greg perform many times before. But his songs, delivered in Greg's deadpan, Kristoffersonian voice (I think that's a good thing, by the way), completely cracked me up. From "Bunny Hell" to "Trout Fishing Beatitudes," I was the only person to laugh out loud.
After that, I made sure to take a poetry class I could with Greg, hoping some of his magic would rub off on me. To no avail, because my poetry still sucked. Still does suck. But I always had fun in his class, and he was unfailingly encouraging.
The first time my husband Don ever met Greg was at an English department picnic. Don was instantly charmed when Greg invited him to shoot targets with a BB gun he'd brought along. The target? "Poetry Man" comic books another student had made, with Greg's cartooned image on the cover. Luckily he had brought a big stack of them along. People were shootin' 'em up!
Who knows? Maybe laughter is some kind of wealth engine we can use to attack our budget deficits.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Got Optimism?
Where does someone in need of an infusion of exuberance and optimism look? Why, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, of course. OK, only if you're a total dork, or have an English degree. Guilty on both counts. I looked through my bookshelf, thinking I still had a copy. Earlier this week I received a facsimile of the original 1855 edition.
What I'm looking for is right there on the cover, beneath the title: "Bold-faced thoughts on the power and pleasure of self-expression." Zowie. There's the beginning of that mojo I need to reclaim.
Whitman wrote LOG less than a hundred years after the founding of this country, and he's downright giddy about the possibilities. I don't remember reading his prose introduction, which reads more like a list of America's virtues than an essay.
"The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. . . . Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall."
I'm only at the beginning of the book, but already I can't help but contrast Whitman's faith in the inherent greatness of our country and its people with the gloomy and mean rhetoric we hear from many in public life now. I don't hear enough of the "power and pleasure of self-expression," unless it's from people who are more interested in hearing themselves talk than in making our nation greater. Maybe there's so little of it because many have decided we can't afford it. There's altogether too many bald-faced accusations and mischaracterizations and not enough trust in our ability to solve the problems of our day.
It's not like I'm going to stop reading the news. But I expect that marinating myself in Whitman's prose poems is just the tonic I need.
What I'm looking for is right there on the cover, beneath the title: "Bold-faced thoughts on the power and pleasure of self-expression." Zowie. There's the beginning of that mojo I need to reclaim.
Whitman wrote LOG less than a hundred years after the founding of this country, and he's downright giddy about the possibilities. I don't remember reading his prose introduction, which reads more like a list of America's virtues than an essay.
"The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. . . . Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall."
I'm only at the beginning of the book, but already I can't help but contrast Whitman's faith in the inherent greatness of our country and its people with the gloomy and mean rhetoric we hear from many in public life now. I don't hear enough of the "power and pleasure of self-expression," unless it's from people who are more interested in hearing themselves talk than in making our nation greater. Maybe there's so little of it because many have decided we can't afford it. There's altogether too many bald-faced accusations and mischaracterizations and not enough trust in our ability to solve the problems of our day.
It's not like I'm going to stop reading the news. But I expect that marinating myself in Whitman's prose poems is just the tonic I need.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Meditation, not medication
Even before I became a stay-at-home mom, I often felt out of sync with the rest of the world. I don't think I'm alone in preferring life to come at me in slow, long waves instead of the hectic pace so many people are following, or trying to follow.
My eighteen-year-old son has always been great at wiggling, Houdini-like, out of stuff he'd prefer not to do, in favor of doing precisely what he wants to do--play. I mean it when I tell him I hope he can figure out a way to earn a living by playing. Others have. Why couldn't he?
Similarly, I've set my life up to be slower than the average bear's. Everything, rewards and stress alike, have arrived at a slower pace. Everything has its price.
My grandparents had stopped working their ranch near Bozeman, Montana, almost twenty years before I came to live with my grandma and finish my degree at Montana State. She had a pasture full of alfalfa that neighboring farmers cut. The most memorable of the bunch was a guy who used two draft horses instead of a tractor to cut the hay. You didn't much see draft horses in Montana. He made quite a spectacle of himself.
Grandma was a sweet gal, but she had a tendency to be a little judgmental. That must be where I get it from.
"I don't why he doesn't just use a tractor, like everybody else," she'd say. "He must be plumb crazy."
Still, her natural frugality always took over. A lifetime of ranching, the Depression and World War II had carved it into her soul. Grandma never liked anything to go to waste. Besides, he may have been crazy, but he was paying good money for that hay!
He came by with his team on a hot, dusty July afternoon. I decided to see for myself just how crazy he was. I took some ice water out to him.
He seemed surprised. "People don't usually offer me anything when I'm out here." Which meant to me that he wasn't crazy, because truly crazy people don't even notice that others think they're crazy.
After he drank the water, we chatted and I petted the horses. They were much calmer than the quarter horses and painted ponies most common around there, who usually jerked their heads and snorted at the touch of strange hands. He explained that he'd been diagnosed with high blood pressure, and his doctor had casually suggested that he slow down. That's what they all say, as they're writing a prescription for hypertension medication. But this guy really took that to heart. One of the ideas that grew out of his journey toward taking life easier was to do some of his farm work by draft horse.
"Haven't had trouble with my blood pressure since."
A few years ago I took a six-week meditation course. At the first class, one of the other students said she was taking the class because she had high blood pressure, and she'd heard that meditation could help lower her numbers. She came to every class, and by the last class she reported that her doctor had suggested a little experiment: reducing her medication and keep going with the meditation.
Sometimes when you're behind, you're actually ahead. Kind of sounds like something Ricky Bobby's dad ("If you're not first, you're last") would say. I'll take my chances with less stress and low blood pressure.
My eighteen-year-old son has always been great at wiggling, Houdini-like, out of stuff he'd prefer not to do, in favor of doing precisely what he wants to do--play. I mean it when I tell him I hope he can figure out a way to earn a living by playing. Others have. Why couldn't he?
Similarly, I've set my life up to be slower than the average bear's. Everything, rewards and stress alike, have arrived at a slower pace. Everything has its price.
My grandparents had stopped working their ranch near Bozeman, Montana, almost twenty years before I came to live with my grandma and finish my degree at Montana State. She had a pasture full of alfalfa that neighboring farmers cut. The most memorable of the bunch was a guy who used two draft horses instead of a tractor to cut the hay. You didn't much see draft horses in Montana. He made quite a spectacle of himself.
Grandma was a sweet gal, but she had a tendency to be a little judgmental. That must be where I get it from.
"I don't why he doesn't just use a tractor, like everybody else," she'd say. "He must be plumb crazy."
Still, her natural frugality always took over. A lifetime of ranching, the Depression and World War II had carved it into her soul. Grandma never liked anything to go to waste. Besides, he may have been crazy, but he was paying good money for that hay!
He came by with his team on a hot, dusty July afternoon. I decided to see for myself just how crazy he was. I took some ice water out to him.
He seemed surprised. "People don't usually offer me anything when I'm out here." Which meant to me that he wasn't crazy, because truly crazy people don't even notice that others think they're crazy.
After he drank the water, we chatted and I petted the horses. They were much calmer than the quarter horses and painted ponies most common around there, who usually jerked their heads and snorted at the touch of strange hands. He explained that he'd been diagnosed with high blood pressure, and his doctor had casually suggested that he slow down. That's what they all say, as they're writing a prescription for hypertension medication. But this guy really took that to heart. One of the ideas that grew out of his journey toward taking life easier was to do some of his farm work by draft horse.
"Haven't had trouble with my blood pressure since."
A few years ago I took a six-week meditation course. At the first class, one of the other students said she was taking the class because she had high blood pressure, and she'd heard that meditation could help lower her numbers. She came to every class, and by the last class she reported that her doctor had suggested a little experiment: reducing her medication and keep going with the meditation.
Sometimes when you're behind, you're actually ahead. Kind of sounds like something Ricky Bobby's dad ("If you're not first, you're last") would say. I'll take my chances with less stress and low blood pressure.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Signs of intelligent life
A friend who was recently laid off from his job and I were discussing how our job searches were going. He said he has a few things in the hopper. The best I could say: "It's going." That day I'd applied for one of those sign-of-the-times jobs, as a part-time, substitute technician at the local library. After I expressed doubt about why I was even applying, he said (and I paraphrase), "Well, you've been out of it for a while, so you might have to take what you can get."
Ouch.
Now, we've known each for almost sixteen years, and I'm sure he didn't mean for it to come out like that. Except that it did come out like that.
Maybe he knows something about the job market and the workplace that I don't know. After all, I have been "out of it" for ten years.
Then again, he knows me. He knows I'm smart and capable. It's not like I'm some sixteen-year-old applying for her first job at Taco Bell. I've worked since I was eleven (babysitting for neighbor kids). I have a bachelor's degree. I've got some skill-dazzles.
An employment coach recently told me that a lot of employers hesitate to hire people with resume gaps because they assume they're going to have to teach them everything and hold their hands all the time.
Is Bobby Riggs writing the human resources manuals here? Methinks it is not I who needs updating.
Number one, it's not like I'm Rip Van Winkle. I've been awake, though often sleep-deprived, and yes, even sentient, during the last decade. Google has practically idiot-proofed the Blogger program I'm using at this moment. But for cryin' out loud, is it necessary for me to point out that I'm using Blogger at this moment?
Number two, don't most jobs, apart from the President's, have training programs?
Number three, I can learn, from training programs, and also with the desire to get and keep and improve at a job and just plain old curiosity.
And number four, I dare anyone to try staying home alone with a toddler. Talk about being an independent contractor. With most of the other women my age at work, I often felt like a pioneer woman, out there alone on the prairie. High lonesome winds. Had to invent our own fun and stay sane, and yes, sentient, at the same time. Cookin' up a new batch of play dough. Pitchin' a tent over the dining room table and playin' Indians. Not a hint of adult conversation in sight. Years before I talked in a complete sentence.
Or at least until my husband got home from work.
Surely there are hiring supervisors out there who can put aside their prejudices about resume gaps and the intellectual capacity of stay-at-home moms.
I'm counting on it.
Ouch.
Now, we've known each for almost sixteen years, and I'm sure he didn't mean for it to come out like that. Except that it did come out like that.
Maybe he knows something about the job market and the workplace that I don't know. After all, I have been "out of it" for ten years.
Then again, he knows me. He knows I'm smart and capable. It's not like I'm some sixteen-year-old applying for her first job at Taco Bell. I've worked since I was eleven (babysitting for neighbor kids). I have a bachelor's degree. I've got some skill-dazzles.
An employment coach recently told me that a lot of employers hesitate to hire people with resume gaps because they assume they're going to have to teach them everything and hold their hands all the time.
Is Bobby Riggs writing the human resources manuals here? Methinks it is not I who needs updating.
Number one, it's not like I'm Rip Van Winkle. I've been awake, though often sleep-deprived, and yes, even sentient, during the last decade. Google has practically idiot-proofed the Blogger program I'm using at this moment. But for cryin' out loud, is it necessary for me to point out that I'm using Blogger at this moment?
Number two, don't most jobs, apart from the President's, have training programs?
Number three, I can learn, from training programs, and also with the desire to get and keep and improve at a job and just plain old curiosity.
And number four, I dare anyone to try staying home alone with a toddler. Talk about being an independent contractor. With most of the other women my age at work, I often felt like a pioneer woman, out there alone on the prairie. High lonesome winds. Had to invent our own fun and stay sane, and yes, sentient, at the same time. Cookin' up a new batch of play dough. Pitchin' a tent over the dining room table and playin' Indians. Not a hint of adult conversation in sight. Years before I talked in a complete sentence.
Or at least until my husband got home from work.
Surely there are hiring supervisors out there who can put aside their prejudices about resume gaps and the intellectual capacity of stay-at-home moms.
I'm counting on it.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Just my opinion, ma'am
When I wrote for my high school newspaper, I entered several journalism contests in the editorial category. Most of the time the best I did was to get a honorable mention, but my last contest my senior year I actually won for my editorial on busing. Remember that issue? Serendipity played a role in my victory, because a couple of weeks before that contest I had been listening to a talk show on KPFK, the National Public Radio affiliate in Los Angeles. The topic: busing.
The contest organizers never told me that I won because my editorial exhaustively covered the issue, just as KPFK had that day. Of course I had an opinion--it wouldn't have been an editorial otherwise. As if I were debating, I discussed the pros and cons and explained why the position I took was the correct course of action. I was shooting for a well-reasoned, earned opinion that was based on my interpretation of the facts.
As a high school senior, my mother was fond of telling me that I thought I knew everything. (The fact that I didn't was going to become abundantly clear to me over the next few years.) But the one thing I knew even as a seventeen-year-old was that editorials are distinct from news, a fact that escapes news producers and consumers alike.
Nowadays it's fashionable for editorialists to write copy that tears down their opponents' point of view without ever explicitly stating their own solutions. Charles Krauthammer's article in the local paper entitled "Obama still dreamer in chief" is a great example of this kind of writing. While he doesn't hesitate to describe President Obama as "fatuous" and otherwise unmoored from reality, never once does Mr. Krauthammer come right out and say, "Oil producers ought to drill wherever and whenever they can, and nothing, not even the worst oil spill in U.S. history, ought to disrupt the flow of oil to consumers. And there's no need to think of 50 years from now, after that supply of oil is depleted and other spills of this magnitude have occurred. Drill, baby, drill!"
If this is what he had written, the best I could say is that at least he was intellectually honest.
There are no news sources that are unbiased, primarily because there is no one alive who is unbiased. The closest thing to an unbiased news source is the Christian Science Monitor. I haven't followed its coverage of the health care debate, but I would expect a bias against medical technology. FOX News' "Fair and Balanced" moniker: baloney paid for with Rupert Murdoch's gazillions. Fair and Balanced, compared with what?
Rush and O'Reilly aren't the only ones who are confusing opinion for fact and entertainment for news. I'm as big a fan of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" as the next guy. For the record, I think Stewart and Colbert know where the lines are. They wouldn't be performing on Comedy Central if they didn't. The trouble is, some of their viewers don't get it. It scares me when I hear people say they get their news from "The Daily Show." I take Jon Stewart at his word--this is fake news, and he's a fake news anchor. The fun is in the comic perspective he takes, completely purposefully, unlike Glenn Beck's deadly serious yet unintentionally ridiculous diatribes. Stewart and Colbert's zingers routinely hit the mark. Sometimes they do it better than the "real" news anchors. Still, both shows are comedy first, and opinion second, with commentary on current events mixed in.
If you want reassurance that there are still some people in the news biz who know how to do their jobs, I recommend "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer." on PBS. I am always reassured, about both the state of the journalism business and the world, when I watch Lehrer's show. The guests, who are experts on the issues, are often sitting beside each other, and frequently, in the studio with the interviewer. That lends itself to more reasoned, civil discourse. It's really difficult, unless you're congenitally ill-mannered, to personally attack someone when they're breathing the same air.
The contest organizers never told me that I won because my editorial exhaustively covered the issue, just as KPFK had that day. Of course I had an opinion--it wouldn't have been an editorial otherwise. As if I were debating, I discussed the pros and cons and explained why the position I took was the correct course of action. I was shooting for a well-reasoned, earned opinion that was based on my interpretation of the facts.
As a high school senior, my mother was fond of telling me that I thought I knew everything. (The fact that I didn't was going to become abundantly clear to me over the next few years.) But the one thing I knew even as a seventeen-year-old was that editorials are distinct from news, a fact that escapes news producers and consumers alike.
Nowadays it's fashionable for editorialists to write copy that tears down their opponents' point of view without ever explicitly stating their own solutions. Charles Krauthammer's article in the local paper entitled "Obama still dreamer in chief" is a great example of this kind of writing. While he doesn't hesitate to describe President Obama as "fatuous" and otherwise unmoored from reality, never once does Mr. Krauthammer come right out and say, "Oil producers ought to drill wherever and whenever they can, and nothing, not even the worst oil spill in U.S. history, ought to disrupt the flow of oil to consumers. And there's no need to think of 50 years from now, after that supply of oil is depleted and other spills of this magnitude have occurred. Drill, baby, drill!"
If this is what he had written, the best I could say is that at least he was intellectually honest.
There are no news sources that are unbiased, primarily because there is no one alive who is unbiased. The closest thing to an unbiased news source is the Christian Science Monitor. I haven't followed its coverage of the health care debate, but I would expect a bias against medical technology. FOX News' "Fair and Balanced" moniker: baloney paid for with Rupert Murdoch's gazillions. Fair and Balanced, compared with what?
Rush and O'Reilly aren't the only ones who are confusing opinion for fact and entertainment for news. I'm as big a fan of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" as the next guy. For the record, I think Stewart and Colbert know where the lines are. They wouldn't be performing on Comedy Central if they didn't. The trouble is, some of their viewers don't get it. It scares me when I hear people say they get their news from "The Daily Show." I take Jon Stewart at his word--this is fake news, and he's a fake news anchor. The fun is in the comic perspective he takes, completely purposefully, unlike Glenn Beck's deadly serious yet unintentionally ridiculous diatribes. Stewart and Colbert's zingers routinely hit the mark. Sometimes they do it better than the "real" news anchors. Still, both shows are comedy first, and opinion second, with commentary on current events mixed in.
If you want reassurance that there are still some people in the news biz who know how to do their jobs, I recommend "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer." on PBS. I am always reassured, about both the state of the journalism business and the world, when I watch Lehrer's show. The guests, who are experts on the issues, are often sitting beside each other, and frequently, in the studio with the interviewer. That lends itself to more reasoned, civil discourse. It's really difficult, unless you're congenitally ill-mannered, to personally attack someone when they're breathing the same air.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Keeping Hope Alive
I've been thinking about the state of the world more than usual because I'm sending our 18-year-old out there. A world in political, economic, spiritual and environmental turmoil. When I was 18, I had high hopes that I could help make the world a better place. The fact that the world is in such a mess isn't all my fault, of course. But dang it--I wish my sons were inheriting better circumstances.
Get over it, some might say. The world is always in a mess. It's a ruthless old place, and our kids better be prepared to deal with it. The prescription: grab up as many resources as you can to keep you and yours safe. That looks like driving around town in a Humvee, living in a gated community, attending a megachurch and sending your kids to private school, or better yet, homeschooling them.
My idealism has waned and waxed. As I've faced personal and professional challenges, I might have been convinced that yes, indeed, the world is a tough place and I'd better put up my dukes. But along the way I've also happened onto more than my fair share of truth and beauty: the births of my babies, the outpouring of sunshine, birdsong, the kindness of strangers, rain in the desert, the blazing beauty of trees in autumn, the bounty of summer vegetable gardens, the shy presence of deer, startling displays of talent, and the healing of disease.
I'm going to share a secret for preserving hope in a world with a serious shortage of the stuff: I'm always on the lookout for more of this sweetness, the kind no man makes, that is there for us as surely as dew on the lilies of the field. An outpouring that usually appears at those moments when we most expect it.
In the 80s I worked in the prep room of the Swan/Heavenly Goose Restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz (later leveled by the 1989 earthquake). I was chopping vegetables below a barred window facing onto Front Street. Front Street was a rough place by Santa Cruz standards, and nearly all the businesses along there had installed bars on their windows. A transient walking by stopped to stare at me.
"Lady," he said, "you're in prison."
I was too stunned to speak, so it was up to my co-worker to respond. Franco had more life experience, and it didn't hurt that he'd grown up in Brooklyn.
"Hey, pal," he said, waving his cleaver, "the bars work both ways."
No doubt Franco would have said he was just a street-smart guy chasing off the riff raff. His words have stuck with me because, like Springsteen's in my previous post, they're so true. The bars work both ways. On the one hand the bars kept the business safe from thieves and vandals. On the other hand there are people with electronic security systems in their homes who are imprisoned by their fears about all that could threaten them. Their vigilance is focused on filtering out the bad. But if the filter's too fine, the good, the truth and beauty, can't make it through, either.
Creating a better world is still a good idea, even if pursuing it too often feels like sandbagging against a rapidly rising stream. In my experience, cultivating eyes and hearts to expect truth and beauty is a recipe for lasting security.
Here's Emily Dickinson saying it poetically:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Get over it, some might say. The world is always in a mess. It's a ruthless old place, and our kids better be prepared to deal with it. The prescription: grab up as many resources as you can to keep you and yours safe. That looks like driving around town in a Humvee, living in a gated community, attending a megachurch and sending your kids to private school, or better yet, homeschooling them.
My idealism has waned and waxed. As I've faced personal and professional challenges, I might have been convinced that yes, indeed, the world is a tough place and I'd better put up my dukes. But along the way I've also happened onto more than my fair share of truth and beauty: the births of my babies, the outpouring of sunshine, birdsong, the kindness of strangers, rain in the desert, the blazing beauty of trees in autumn, the bounty of summer vegetable gardens, the shy presence of deer, startling displays of talent, and the healing of disease.
I'm going to share a secret for preserving hope in a world with a serious shortage of the stuff: I'm always on the lookout for more of this sweetness, the kind no man makes, that is there for us as surely as dew on the lilies of the field. An outpouring that usually appears at those moments when we most expect it.
In the 80s I worked in the prep room of the Swan/Heavenly Goose Restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz (later leveled by the 1989 earthquake). I was chopping vegetables below a barred window facing onto Front Street. Front Street was a rough place by Santa Cruz standards, and nearly all the businesses along there had installed bars on their windows. A transient walking by stopped to stare at me.
"Lady," he said, "you're in prison."
I was too stunned to speak, so it was up to my co-worker to respond. Franco had more life experience, and it didn't hurt that he'd grown up in Brooklyn.
"Hey, pal," he said, waving his cleaver, "the bars work both ways."
No doubt Franco would have said he was just a street-smart guy chasing off the riff raff. His words have stuck with me because, like Springsteen's in my previous post, they're so true. The bars work both ways. On the one hand the bars kept the business safe from thieves and vandals. On the other hand there are people with electronic security systems in their homes who are imprisoned by their fears about all that could threaten them. Their vigilance is focused on filtering out the bad. But if the filter's too fine, the good, the truth and beauty, can't make it through, either.
Creating a better world is still a good idea, even if pursuing it too often feels like sandbagging against a rapidly rising stream. In my experience, cultivating eyes and hearts to expect truth and beauty is a recipe for lasting security.
Here's Emily Dickinson saying it poetically:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Taking Inventory
In an interview some years ago, Bruce Springsteen said something to the effect, "I may not be the best singer, I may not be the best guitar player, I may not even be the best performer. But when you put together all the things I do, I got something."
His words have stuck in my mind because they're so true. As I search for employment, I'm constantly thinking about all the things I do and matching them with job descriptions. I don't sing, I don't play guitar, and the idea of performing in front of a crowd gives me the heebie-jeebies. But I got something.
There's a lot of talk in employment circles about "monetizing experience." Along those lines, my friend Alaya suggested I start putting together a little package of all the things I do--especially the ones I most love to do. When I start listing all the things I do, have done and would like to do (and this last one may be the most important), it's a long list that at cursory glance doesn't necessarily seem to have any connection to one another. Editor/writer. Wild animal care volunteer. Caterer. Sound system operator. Hospitality host. Event planner. Chef. Amateur spiritual director. Interviewer. Nonprofit fundraiser. Active listener. Yoga practitioner.
My friend Kathryn looked at one iteration of my resume and said very sweetly and to the point, "I don't know how to get my arms around this." Read: the average human resources person would throw my resume in the "Flake" category. I'm sure there is one.
But with a little imagination and a lot of insider knowledge, there are some themes. Excellent overall communication skills. Nurturing and nourishing skills. Planning and management abilities. An interest in lifelong learning. A versatility very much needed in today's workplaces, where employees are often fulfilling more than one job description.
Try it yourself. It can't hurt. At the very least it clarifies my presentation and sharpens my discernment about where I would be most effective.
His words have stuck in my mind because they're so true. As I search for employment, I'm constantly thinking about all the things I do and matching them with job descriptions. I don't sing, I don't play guitar, and the idea of performing in front of a crowd gives me the heebie-jeebies. But I got something.
There's a lot of talk in employment circles about "monetizing experience." Along those lines, my friend Alaya suggested I start putting together a little package of all the things I do--especially the ones I most love to do. When I start listing all the things I do, have done and would like to do (and this last one may be the most important), it's a long list that at cursory glance doesn't necessarily seem to have any connection to one another. Editor/writer. Wild animal care volunteer. Caterer. Sound system operator. Hospitality host. Event planner. Chef. Amateur spiritual director. Interviewer. Nonprofit fundraiser. Active listener. Yoga practitioner.
My friend Kathryn looked at one iteration of my resume and said very sweetly and to the point, "I don't know how to get my arms around this." Read: the average human resources person would throw my resume in the "Flake" category. I'm sure there is one.
But with a little imagination and a lot of insider knowledge, there are some themes. Excellent overall communication skills. Nurturing and nourishing skills. Planning and management abilities. An interest in lifelong learning. A versatility very much needed in today's workplaces, where employees are often fulfilling more than one job description.
Try it yourself. It can't hurt. At the very least it clarifies my presentation and sharpens my discernment about where I would be most effective.
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