An Ordinary Life

I don't think I would have believed them. I KNOW I wouldn't have wanted to, nor would I have ever wished for it to be this way. There have been several times I "thought" I had my path mapped out, and if I did my part toward the goals I set, however simple, I'd get there and all would be well. As my current boss says nearly every day, "That's what you get for thinking." So, here I am at nearly 56, at what is generally thought to be a time of starting down the back side of "the hill" and I have to figure out how to map out and navigate yet another new path, starting from scratch, how to be something, or someone else. . . again. There were things I was excited about experiencing at this stage of my life, that either are no longer an option, or simply aren't turning out anything even close to what I had hoped. That would be workable if I had a clue how to fix that, or even could, but I'm not sure that's possible either and it...

Interesting couple of days. It has been an extremely busy week at work. I'm talking crazy making busy. Strangely, people are starting to request to deal with me when they arrive because I'm the one who answers the phone and who they've already talked to. That is kind of cool, but I'm also not licensed and cannot help them with many, if not most of the things they come to us for. This week there were multiple times that the funeral director and I were each assisting a family and we had at least one other family waiting for something. And then the phone. Good gracious that phone never seemed to stop ringing this week. Crazy making I tell you! While Friday had the same sort of pace to it, it had a couple of moments, for me, that put it into perspective and reminded me why I wanted to take on this job. We handled things for a family who's loved one passed very early Wednesday morning. They came in to make arrangements just before lunch. About 4 pm they calle...

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...