As I mentioned earlier this week, I'm job hunting. For the particular job that I really, really want and for which I believe I am immensely qualified, a lot of work is required.
I'm scouring my résumé, ordering transcripts to prove my degrees, and copying documents to prove my City of Youngstown residency. I'm googling and surfing and making long distance calls to procure contact information for former employers. All while the clock is ticking. Every supporting doc has to be in place by June 1st, and this is a holiday weekend, meaning one less day for employees in far-away places to pull a transcript or a proof of employment and send it. University of Maryland needed an extra $15 to expedite the request. Another institution needed $16.75 to FedEx the transcript to Youngstown.
But the thing I dread is the possible question during an interview: "Why do you have so many jobs on your résumé?"
Once I really started working in earnest, simultaneous with the first divorce, things looked good. I got a wonderful job I loved with IBM, a company I loved, and I anticipated spending my entire working life at IBM. Within IBM, one frequently has a variety of short stints during one's career. Or, like a friend of mine, one does the same thing for 20 years. I was the short stint type. I had one assignment for two years, then another for two years, and so on. I finished my Bachelor of Science degree at night and on weekends and then went right into law school, continuing to work full-time.
Two years through law school, I wanted to follow the real estate track, anticipating a lifetime of closings and title investigations and so on. But the real estate courses were only offered during the day, and I was a night student because I worked during the day. This was during John's and my early (pre-marriage) years together, and he said I should follow my heart (well, he didn't use those words!). I talked to my IBM manager about possible options. Could I take four hours a week off without pay to attend the classes I needed? No. Could I come in early to make up the lost time on those days? No. Could I switch from full-time to part-time work? No. No matter what I offered, it was roundly denied. And no alternatives were offered in its place. John and I discussed the situation for a couple of weeks. Finally he said, "Why don't you just quit? I'll pick up the slack."
Life Lesson #1: Listen closely. When the man you're living with isn't 100% sure he wants the relationship, do not—repeat: DO NOT—believe him when he says, "I'll pick up the slack."
Thrilled to be so loved as to be given the freedom to study what I really wanted to study, I gave my notice at IBM after eight wonderful years and two wonderful months.
Approximately six weeks later, having given up a salary equivalent, in 2012 dollars, to $84,000, I received a letter from my younger son telling me he wasn't going to live with his dad any more and wanted to come live with me. He had been voicing this desire since the divorce nine years earlier and throughout a custody battle two years earlier. Now he had reached the age where the judge told him the court would consider his desires if it was litigated again. He had made his decision. He was going to be where he had always wanted to be.
Alas, I was living in Washington, DC, a city not known for great schools. And I had a kid who was very smart and immensely musically talented. I needed to prepare to put him in private school or move to Maryland or Virginia for better public schools. But I was in a wonderful relationship with a wonderful man. Or so I thought. And I had just given up my income.
A couple of months later, after much negotiation with the Father Of My Children, I drove to Dallas to retrieve my younger son and all his possessions, including a drum set and a marimba. I convinced a good prep school in DC to let him in midyear. I got him settled in his new home. And all was well.
Oops! Not so quick there. On Valentine's Day, after being questioned about a couple of outrageous and unexplained purchases on his credit card statement (because I handled all the finances), John said, "I can no longer deny my love for E… and I want to be with her." Bam. Did not see that one coming.
Because what I didn't know, what we had never discussed, was the difficult time John had raising his teenaged son when his wife left 15 years earlier to pursue her artistic dreams. For him, the thought of raising another teenaged boy was more than he could handle. When you pair that with the Vixen on the Sidelines who was telling him to leave me and she would leave her husband and they could be together and live Happily Ever After. Well, if you examine that pairing, you can guess who won. She did.
<Sidebar On> John and I stayed together for three months until I could find another place to live. Tyler and I then moved to Falls Church, VA. John and I stayed friends and married six years later. John came to love and respect Tyler with every fiber of his being. <Sidebar Off>
I went about getting a job, and another job, and another job. From that point forward until Tyler was settled into YSU on a University Scholarship (full tuition plus book allowance), I worked a full-time and two part-time jobs, even through December of 1991 when I graduated from law school.
I was a legal editor. I was a legal index editor. I was a marketing/technical writer on contract to IBM. Each move had its reasons and rationale, either within my control or without. Through all moves, I was a Nordstrom pianist, loving every moment that I made "beautiful music to shop by."
I moved from legal index editor to tech writer for a $10,000 increase. Then that contract was cut. I taught piano for a while, which fact never made it to my technical résumé. I went to a big law firm in DC as manager of database systems after my husband (#3, whom I had married because I needed Major Female Surgery and had no health insurance. I loved him, yes, but I was nudged along by the insurance issue.) told me I wasn't bringing in enough income. (We'll ignore the fact that he had taken an IBM "bridge to retirement" and was earning $0 at selling real estate.) Then my boss at the law firm was fired and I was allied with him. If I didn't find something soon I would also be fired.
I moved to a job as a computer specialist with a government agency in an old building in DC. Emphasize: Old. I was allergic to something in the building. I would get to work at 8:00 feeling fine, and by 9:30 or 10:00 would have a raging headache that would last the rest of the day. Simultaneously, my husband (#4, the good one) was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. I was trying to tend to his emotional and medical needs when he got home from the Pentagon at the end of the day while simultaneously nursing a sick headache. Every Day. So I called the lawyer/publisher I had been working for seasonally during his publishing cycle since the time I left IBM and told him the situation. He quickly invited me to come back to work for him and said I could have all the time off I needed to deal with John's illness.
Life Lesson #2: When working for a MegaMicroManager, never believe him when he says you can have all the time off you need. It just ain't so!
And the fact I've skipped throughout this story is that, beginning in February of 1992, I was studying for and taking a bar exam every six or twelve months.
I've been married four times and have taken five bar exams. Or I've been married five times and have taken four bar exams. I can never remember.
(And, by the way, if you're not familiar with the process, bar exam prep and bar exams are Very Expensive Processes. Expensive in time and expensive in money.)
Let's just say it was a hurdle I was never able to get over. After one Pennsylvania exam and four Virginia exams, I had registered to take the DC exam when John was diagnosed. He/we fought his cancer for 21 months. For me, losing my beloved spouse was life altering. There was no way I wanted to or could sit again for that exam after his death. I was done. I would continue working as a programmer, doing what I knew how to and loved to do.
The morning of the day John died, a company called me and asked me to come work for them as a Lotus Notes Instructor and Consultant. I had taken a class from them several years earlier and they were very impressed with how well I grasped the material. I went to the parent company of what is now SiriusXM Radio as their Lotus Notes Administrator, and every couple of weeks would go back to my company's office to help teach Lotus Notes courses. But then the contract was cut and there was no work for me. A recruiter called and placed me at a very large government contracter as a Lotus Notes Developer.
And then I met a man, (cut to the short version), accepted his marriage proposal, moved to Tucson with him, set up his house, kept his house, and then attempted to raise his teenaged daughter to his standards. All without help from him. Four years later, after I had been out of the technology workforce for four years (and that's about a thousand cyberyears), he said he wanted to be alone.
Life Lesson #3: When a man says he wants to be alone, don't believe him. Especially after he comes home from a business trip and you find a woman's dress in his suitcase. Don't believe him. (By the way, he got married ten weeks after I moved out.)
Once again, when a survivor has to, she starts over again. From the lowest rung on the ladder. She works someplace for two years until she gets some skills built back up and finds something that offers $10,000 more in salary and far better benefits.
Oops, then her son decides to move back to the city where he's been happiest, and he and his wonderful wife take her grandchildren with them.
So, as a result, I have a résumé that looks like the rock wall in the photo above. (Captured in a small town along the Ring of Kerry in late August, 2011.) Rocks, slabs, layered, wedged in, horizontal, vertical. Somehow they hold together. But to look at them, they don't make sense.
I'm sure there are many Human Resources specialists and hiring managers that look at my résumé and scratch their heads in amazement. They think it just doesn't make sense.
But there have been a few—actually, about one every couple of years—who could look at that résumé and realize, "This woman can do anything I give her to do."
I owe my career, fragmented as it is, to those management visionaries who could analogize my rock wall of a résumé to the fact that I got to where I am one brick at a time, one stone at a time.
It all fits together.
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