next.<\/em> There you are, willing and eager to wear away whatever leather there still is on your shoes, but you have no idea what direction to walk. There sits the phone, but you have no one left to call. And you\u2019ve refined your online job-searching skills to the point where it takes you only a fraction of the time to confirm that there\u2019s nothing out there.<\/p>\nNow what? What happens when something must be done, but there is nothing left to do about having nothing to do?<\/p>\n
Such repetitive futility is sometimes described as \u201cSisyphean,\u201d but you come to envy Sisyphus. He never doubts his next step. He has a task at hand and knows what is required and expected of him. The boulder must be rolled up the hill again, and though his back is breaking and his muscles shudder from exhaustion, he will roll it.<\/p>\n
But you haven\u2019t got a boulder. Or a hill. Point me to a boulder, you think, and I will gladly break myself pushing it wherever it needs to go. But you\u2019re not Sisyphus and no one is asking you to do that. No one is asking you to do anything. You\u2019ve been trying to get someone to ask you to do something, but no one will.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been five minutes now. Maybe it\u2019s not too soon to check all those websites again. It\u2019s unlikely that anything new will have appeared on there in just the last five minutes, but you\u2019ve got a long list of sites to check, and by the time you reach the end of that list even more time will have passed. If you wait a bit longer you might have more grounds for hope. If you wait 10 minutes instead of five, then it\u2019s twice as likely that some new job opening will have appeared, right? Or does the math not work that way? You\u2019re not sure, but you wait another five minutes, or maybe only another two, confirming that your inbox is still empty and that the phone has still not rung, and then you check that list of websites again.<\/p>\n
Still nothing.<\/p>\n
A whole hour can go by in such 10-minute increments. It passes by and you have nothing to show for it and you ask yourself where that hour went, where that day went, where that week went. It seems a waste of time, like that old bit about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over again but expecting different results. But it still seems a bit more sane than doing nothing,<\/em> and you don\u2019t know what else to try, what else to do.<\/p>\nBut it\u2019s not quite so regular and steady as that, really. It\u2019s a bit more manic-depressive. The depressive part sneaks up on you. You just sort of notice at some point that you\u2019d stopped, that you\u2019d been sitting there frozen, paralyzed for you don\u2019t know how long. And then you launch yourself back at it in a manic, directionless frenzy. Either way, the results are the same. When there is nothing to do, you can\u2019t do it harder<\/em>. When you have run out of ideas, out of leads, out of options and plans and possibilities, when you just plain don\u2019t know what to do next,<\/em> then urgency is as useless as inertia.<\/p>\nI need to take a break from this, you start to think, then catch yourself, wondering how you can take a break from having nothing to do, wondering how it is that having nothing to do can be, at times, so exhausting<\/em>. And but still, life is life and you have all those other things to do \u2014 laundry and dishes to wash, grass to mow, leaves to rake, snow to shovel. (How did it get to be winter already?) You\u2019re grateful<\/em> for all these tasks and chores, and you perform them with greater care and zeal than ever. And then, remembering, you rush back to check again that list of websites, to confirm the emptiness of the inbox and the silence of the phone.<\/p>\nAnd so time elapses without its passage bringing you any closer to any destination. When there is nothing to be done, you can never be finished doing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019s the job-hunt going?\u201d someones asks you.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, you know,\u201d you say, surprised to hear what sounds like cheerfulness in your own voice. \u201cI\u2019m surfing the Web, working the phone, pounding the pavement, fine-tuning the keywords on my r\u00e9sum\u00e9 \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Consumerist offers the latest in an endless series of articles giving helpful advice to those seeking jobs that don\u2019t exist. This one is about \u201cTips for Beating the R\u00e9sum\u00e9-Reading Robots of Doom.\u201d Keywords, gaming the system, yada yada. It\u2019s possible such tips and tricks might make a difference for someone, and I\u2019m sure they\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-6010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"\n
Fine-tuning the keywords on your r\u00e9sum\u00e9<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Consumerist offers the latest in an endless series of articles giving helpful advice to those seeking jobs that don't exist. This one is about "Tips\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/01\/31\/fine-tuning-the-keywords-on-your-resume\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fine-tuning the keywords on your r\u00e9sum\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Consumerist offers the latest in an endless series of articles giving helpful advice to those seeking jobs that don't exist. This one is about "Tips\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/01\/31\/fine-tuning-the-keywords-on-your-resume\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-01-31T18:41:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/01\/31\/fine-tuning-the-keywords-on-your-resume\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/01\/31\/fine-tuning-the-keywords-on-your-resume\/\",\"name\":\"Fine-tuning the keywords on your r\u00e9sum\u00e9\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-01-31T18:41:32+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-01-31T18:41:32+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"The Consumerist offers the latest in an endless series of articles giving helpful advice to those seeking jobs that don't exist. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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