Distilling Your Life

When you write a resume or CV you're essentially distilling your accomplishments. It's a little disconcerting to condense years of work into several sentences or bullet points. What about all the stuff in between the lines? Well, no one cares about any of that, it's "just the facts ma'am". I don't like to talk about myself very much, so writing these things is a bit difficult for me. What you're really writing (or probably should be) is a kind of ad copy, where the product is you. Of course once you're done with that, there's the whole cover letter business, which is more of the same but even more salesy. This is why self promoters get ahead even if they lack certain qualifications, they have lots of practice.

Have you ever gotten back in touch with someone you haven't spoken to in a while? When the inevetiable "what have you been up to?" question arises, what do you write? I bet you don't write all the little details, just the big events: jobs, moving, children, marriage, etc. This is also a kind of resume, and it's just a little sad that once again you're bullet-pointing your life. I think this is one of the reasons family and friends are so important. They're around for all the between the lines stuff, a.k.a. life.