Resumes and What’s Important

I’ve spent the last 3 weeks agonizing over my resume.  It’s not an easy thing to sum up your life skills and experience on a single sheet of paper…which reminds me that I owe my husband an apology dating back to his job search of a few years back….Sorry, Computer Guy!

So…the resume.  Ugh.  If you only knew how much time I’ve spent staring at a blank Word document page and trying not to cry.  How do you make “I have a blog?” and “I like to write stuff” sound important and impressive?  How do I make my life, which feels so ordinary and boring, sound like the makings of a great author?

I don’t.  That’s what other people are for.

That’s right, after 3 weeks of staring at the screen and chewing on my lower lip, I bought some lip balm and found a resume writer.  Isn’t it weird that I can write 160+ pages in 5 weeks, but a 1 page resume will hold me hostage for almost a month?

The resume guru organized my writing credentials (which were a bit more impressive than I’d imagined them to be…who knew?) in one nifty little section.  At the end of the page went my homeschool experience.  It looked neat, tidy, and very professional.   And I didn’t like it at all.

It wasn’t until this weekend that a friend of mine (Hi Brian!) pointed out the problem.  The homeschool stuff was at the bottom!  “You’re not a writer who one day decided to try homeschooling,” he said to me. “You’re a homeschooler who felt the need to write.”

Yes!  The homeschooling came first!  The resume lady put it at the bottom, because in the “real world” the writing has more value.  It’s a job people can relate to and understand.  Teaching the kids at home?  Not so much.  Stay at home mom of seven?  Not at all.

It’s the truth of being a mom in this modern age; what we do is not valued.  It’s the add-on human interest at the bottom of the page.  My life’s work is the “human interest” section you add on for fluff.

Not this girl.

I took that whole section on homeschooling and stuck it at the top of the page.  This is my life’s work and how I spend my days.  While teaching the kids may lead to writing, the teaching comes first.  The mothering comes even higher than that.  Which is how I put it on the page–the way it should be– I’m the “Mom on Call” and the “Home Educator” long before I get to be “the writer”.  The writing may make my soul sing, but it’s the mothering which fills my heart.