Kelly Gibbons, artist and writer, about me

Monday, August 02, 2004

In the past few days, I have been thinking a lot about where I am going with my creative career. Things aren't working the way I want them to and that means I need to change them. Something needs to be different, but I haven't put my finger on what that is yet. It's coming to me in small bits and pieces, and I am patiently awaiting the whole picture. I have decided to listen to and learn from these small messages and put the puzzle together one piece at a time.

Little things keep coming to me, like updating my resume. I know that might not seem very exciting or like it is a huge change, and when the thought hit me, I didn't either. But, I something (intuition?) told me it was important to do. I didn't wait for later or question why, I just did it. Later, I started to see that there might be something significant in the change. First of all, by updating the resume, I acknowledged that this has been a very important year of my life. I have been working as an artist and writer for a year, but didn't add it to my resume and therefore, didn't acknowledge it as a job. Adding it to my resume somehow made it more real. I also doubled my list of accomplishments on the old resume by adding the new things I've done this year--reminding me again exactly how far I have come in a relatively short time.

the old resume was telling the world what I used to be and want I wanted to be in the past, it was reflecting all the changes I have gone through. The jobs I wanted and qualifications that I had listed on that resume where all old and outdated, and certainly not what I am about now. My top pick for a job was customer service, because at the time I did that resume, it was what I did, and what I thought I was qualified to do, and guess what that is all I was attracting? Job interviews for something I didn't want to do. Several times, I got calls asking me to interview for sales or customer service positions, and I wondered why they would be offering me the type of position that I absolutely did not want. Why? Because that is what I had asked for.

No where in that resume was there anything about wanting a creative position, or that I wanted to be a writer or an artist. I didn't state my intention, or clearly say what I wanted, so how could the person reading it possibly know what I wanted. Obviously, they couldn't.

There's no guarantees that I will get any writing or art assignments or job offers from posting an updated resume, but at least it clearly states what I want now. I want to be an artist and a writer, not a customer service rep and changing that on my resume was one small way of telling the world that. And if there is one thing that I have learned over this past year is that even the smallest steps move you forward.

posted by Kelly @ 8/02/2004 08:55:00 AM

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