Course of Life

The hidden edge to a blessed life: twelve years later you emerge from the dream, faced with the real world and its resumes, its CVs, its years of required experience, and it asks of you, “What the hell else can you do?”

My answer: Everything! I think. Nothing, probably. Somewhere in between, I just don’t know how to present it other than in writing. Oh irony.

I’m a fan of languages, and I imagine I’ll be studying one or another for the rest of my life. Despite that, and my grasp of romance languages and their latin roots, I had to look up what exactly “curriculum vitae” translates into. The answer: Course of life.

An oddly poetic title for a document that aims to reduce us to our marketable characteristics. If a CV were a true examination of the course of my life, then I would feel much more confident writing it.

“I hope when people ask what you’re going to do with your English and/or creative writing degree you’ll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say, Oh.” –Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things

For over ten years, I have not added a single line to a resume. Have had no official titles. No start date, no end date. No salary, no real responsibilities but the deadline on my calendar, or the hunt for the next one. But I’ve had a life! I promise. There has been a course to my life, even if I cannot summarize it in bullet points that will make me a promising candidate to…whatever.

Don’t you worry, I can stretch the truth like anyone else. Hell, stretching the truth has been the one thing I’ve consistently done over the past decade. So my current, updated resume sure sounds like I have marketable skills. Ish. I could, theoretically, be a teacher, a coach, write in some other capacity that is not vested in the lives of children and teenagers.

What am I good at other than writing? For one: questioning what I am good at—including writing, But we can leave that little tidbit unexamined, lest this spirals into the billionth thinkpiece on Substack about imposter syndrome.

In the course of my life, this is what I’ve learned: I know how to work late into the night on a lump of imagined clay, shaping it hour after hour, keystroke after keystroke, into something impossible. Into something that matches the impossible perfection that exists only in my mind, only vaguely. I know how to take a memory and stretch it out into something meaningful, if entirely false. I know how to connect the dots. I know how to erase dots that are superfluous, that are redundant, that are just not that interesting.

I know how to make a plan for my day, and when it is disrupted by the unforseen, I know how to fold it into something new. And I don’t mean that I tuck that plan away resentfully. I can take the joy of that imagined hope for the day and origami it into something new. Or, at the very least, helpful to someone else. I can set aside a chapter to run an errand, to make a meal, to flounder while I substitute at a daycare for a long morning.

I know how to listen to the world around me, and absorb it, and let it marinate for months or years. I know how to sit on a panel and shut up for fifteen minutes and then make a single joke that breaks the tension but does not derail the conversation. Are there any jobs out there, I wonder, who might benefit from someone who is adept at watching bad films or reading subpar books and knowing how they might be fixed, what little choices could have been made differently that would result in a more compelling story? More importantly, are there any jobs out there that could benefit from someone who can watch a bad movie or read a subpar book and not dismiss it as merely and entirely bad? Someone who knows that faults can lead not just to a path for betterment, but to humor, to pleasure, to an appreciation for how hard it is to create?

A lot of jobs that I feel like I might be able to do require a knowledge of SEO. Do I have any idea what that is, other than a useful acronym to know for crossword puzzles? Only vaguely. But I’m willing to learn. There’s no line for that on a CV. No appreciation for someone who spends half his time searching for answers to the questions which arise—however tangentially—in the act of writing. What happens when a person has a puncture wound exactly two inches below the bottom-most rib? What is the least efficient but still plausible route to drive from New Orleans to Fairbanks, Alaska? What fish would be visible while scuba diving off the coast of Malaysia in January and, since there’s a whole lot of Malaysian coast, in which part of the country would a scuba diver be likely to find themselves in January, taking weather patterns into account.

Where is the part of the standard CV that allows me to flaunt the fact that for years I have had no one standing over me asking me to write, and yet the work comes pouring out of me? Where oh where can I point out that, in the course of my life, I have had no way to measure if my work was any good, other than to sit at the screen and come up with a standard which I felt reflected excellence? Maybe not every, every time, every word of every draft. But excellence which was consistent enough and excellent enough so that I could keep my life on its miraculous, blessed course?

Where, in the current job market being shrunk by AI and billionaires unwilling to part with another percentage point of profit margin can I point out that for almost every day of the past dozen years, I have been able to go to sleep at three a.m giddy from the work, and knowing that I could have breakfast on a Tuesday at the leisurely time of 9:45? At my favorite place in Mexico City, too, where lines tend to be long on the weekend, but on a Tuesday I can waltz in and have a cup of coffee while I stare at the fountain and know there is no rush to place my food order? This is not to gloat but to say that I, for a time—and hopefully not the last time—knew of job perks. Not health care, of course, but fresh air and a cup of coffee at 9:45 in the morning.

What else can I do but write? What about how to take my work with me wherever I go? How to never clock out, not all the way? Which is not by any means an endorsement of “grind” culture, more of an admission of guilt. Look, it’s no secret that writers and artists are particularly adept at beating up on themsleves, especially those facing the ppossibility that they may have to stop getting paid for their art. So maybe I should beef up this cover letter a little bit, flex for a moment. Point out that I can have the view below and not go immediately rushing down the hill toward those reefs. I can sit with my brain and my hands and nothing else and work.

Look, I wrote a few hundred words and then rushed down that hill, yes. I’m no fool. But I can’t quite find the space to say that on a page-long CV. To simultaneously point out the dedication it takes to stare at beauty and not immediately throw yourself into it; the skill it takes to capture that beauty in words, and the—ahem—strategic foresight it takes to know when to set aside the work, recognizing the rare gift of a job that allows you this office, and bask in the beauty.

If this document is going to ferry me into some other life, shouldn’t it ask me what else I can do, truly? Shouldn’t I be able to express in a way that is not a professional template, nor broken up by bullet points, what I have carried with me? Shouldn’t it actually speak of the true course of my life?