Who Am I Now? or Who I AM Now.

… Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.

~ Brené Brown

For the past week or so I have been sorting out the stories of Who I AM in an effort to build something that most people call a résumé. It is NOT something I feel too happy about DOing, still… I’m learning to see all of Life, the ordinary through the extraordinary, as adventures. And this has BEEN that!!

I BEgan this process in a way I’ve grown accustomed to DOing things. I looked up the words that I “think” I know the meanings of, learning yet again that what I think I know is barely a ripple in the pond. The word résumé has these synonyms: recommence, start again, BEgin again, pick up where you left off, restart, take up again, carry on [and those are just a BEginning, I am certain]. Remarkable, eh?!

For this piece of my Life Journey I have nothing to recommence [save for my lovely practise of “commencing to get ready to BEgin”]. Starting again, likewise, isn’t quite it, and picking up where I left off isn’t it at all.

This time I am Starting Where I AM. It’s only an “AGAIN” experience in that I am looking round to find work, work to add income, yet more specifically, work that is meaningful to me and work that lets me BE of Service in some capacity. Have I “put down” BEing or DOing what is meaningful, such that I need take it up again?

I think what is more true in My Story is that I am Carrying On. That is the one synonym that rings truest and so that is what I will create with my résumé. That is the point of fabricating something that I hope will arouse curiosity, invite into my Life and World people who I can work BEside, alongside, and in collaboration with.

What does it matter the jobs I held or the places I worked THEN?! BEfore I “medically” retired 10 years ago?

Here’s what I am thinking, today, [and I am certain it was slightly different yesterday so I can safely assume it will evolve further by tomorrow] 24 January 2012: my résumé is an introduction, one that will BE received “well” by those people in those places where I am likely to “carry on” with working at a “job” most joyously, happily, and effectively.

Back to the piece of the quote from Brené Brown and Chapter 3 of A Year With Myself… in particular the “brave enough to explore the darkness” part.

I have been digging deep inside me, into the “story” of me that throughout this chapter I have been fortunate to learn to SEE with new eyes. I have been piecing together what is NOT merely “relevant” to prospective “employers” [whom I prefer to call “fellow adventurers & collaborators”] but what is relevant and essential to ME, the Currie who is NOW seeking employment as a means of adding to her income.

This is interesting, too, from the standpoint of the system within which I am working, Social Security’s Ticket To Work Program. NOT something I am too familiar with, which is to say I surely had a whole bunch of misinformation I was treating as facts. Now, however, BEcause of hitting the first wall when I tried to DO this getting a job thing quick-fast, I have been slowed-down to actually dig, bravely, into my story.

I am realising daily, and often more frequently, how much I have let my “story” aka résumé, squish me into a box. Let it determine what I can get a job DOing rather than letting it tell me what I CAN DO [an important distinction that informs me constantly].

My story, i.e. what work I have done, well or badly, jobs I have had, briefly or longer, and the skills and capabilities those all “qualified” me to DO is pretty much across the board irrelevant. I’ve changed in this past decade and my health and well-BEing have improved such that I CAN work at a “job” again BEcause of those changes. Essentially, my story is noise. It’s in the past.

The only relevance and meaning from it are what I am finding, like an archeologist sifting through, looking for clues, insights, encouragements to keep sifting.

I’ve written résumés for myself and lots and lots of other people over my Life. It is like filling out a form. It isn’t that hard, yet it’s only easy if you have the correct information. I suppose, too, it’s easier when it is NOT my own résumé; it’s simple to say good and complimentary things about others… Why, then, have I balked and resisted, even in one case, refused to create my own résumé?! MayBE I didn’t know what to put on it, what can or will show how I can best “carry on” in a job Now, in 2012.

While I cannot say I completely “own” my story Now, I DO know it better, understand it differently, and see in it possiblities for discovering my “light” and its “power.” NOT its infinite power, just its TODAY power.

Rewriting my story [and by extension my résumé] isn’t about changing facts, rather it’s about sifting through them and finding what encourages me, what brings me JOY, and what truly allows MY Light to light others’ lights. I have found a somewhat cumbersome and certainly odd means of getting to the “core” of what is important Now, to me, and for me to focus on and put out there for others to see, consider, and know.

It is by turns thrilling, exhilarating, bizarre, and utterly surprising. I have learnt that I enJOY DOing the same things over and over with different people and groups. And I have a deep desire to work with my hands, to learn framing and how to hang art or arrange things for people to SEE.

And while I love teaching, and dearly miss it, as I have each and every day for the past 10 years, I simply have no desire to have THAT BIG a job or that much responsibility. Still, I love my little gig teaching the kids that come on their field trips to Old School Square. I DO a collage art activity with them and their teachers, as well their parents and grandparents who come along [EVERYbody plays] as “chaperones.” It is ALWAYS a wondrous time and I DO wish I could DO it more regularly, but it is how it is and in this version of my story I celebrate and deLIGHT in what is and call it “enough.”

I’m NOT at all sure that my counsellor at Vocational Rehabilitation will DO cartwheels over the  résumé I am “collaging” but I also know it doesn’t matter. What I am creating is an introduction to me, a way to cut through all the noise of rituals and protocol. If someone can’t enJOY my  résumé's presentation, so BE it. Certainly I don’t expect EVERYone to BE thrilled, turned-on, and excited at the prospect of employing me.

In this telling of My Story, I am who I am, like Popeye. Would I love to find meaningful, well-paying work come a-calling, asking me to play?! Sure I would. Yet I know enough to recognise when I am floating in a make-BElieve World. I am finding the middle place, where I fit, perfectly, exquisitely, NOW.