An Ordinary Life

It isn't so much that I haven't come to terms with my current "status" in life. I have. . . At least I think I have. I mean I've said things like, "I'm the surviving spouse." and "My husband has passed away." and other people have called me the "W" word and it hasn't really phased me. . . much. I've even had to put that as my status on a few forms. But I really hadn't said it out loud. But this week I got a phone call and the caller asked to speak to Ed. That may seem unusual, but we had started giving out my number for his business calls because he often didn't have his hearing aids in and missed important calls. It caught me off guard a bit because, while it happened frequently right after he passed, it had tapered off and I hadn't had any for about a month. "Hello, this is _______ Ambulance, Company, may I speak with Edmond please? We're calling to make sure he was happy with the service

My current situation is such that I have no choice but to find a job. My husband thought he had things in place to take care of me as I took care of him for the past several years, but unfortunately, that isn’t how it is working out. So, at a month short of 55 years old, and after nearly a decade I am looking for work. Things have really changed. I’ve researched “best practices” as regards resume’s and such and it seems that now you almost have to create a resume’ for each firm you ship one off to. This is required because the objective is for a living breathing human to take a look at it and hopefully find you worthy of an in-person meeting. To even have a shot at this viewing of your skills summary by “organic” eyes you are, in many if not most cases going to need to get past the electronic/mechanical “gate keeper” the applicant tracking system. The challenge is to “seed” your resume’ with exactly the right words or phrases that this app tracker has been programmed to “like” so t