I finally feel like I’m back to normal. I’d been sleep walking through the metaphoric equivalent of jello mixed with rubber cement, flavored with fear, sprinkled with self doubt, and infused with sadness. And now I am DONE.

Seriously, I feel like I’ve popped out of the goop with a great corking POP and now I’m back on land, in the sun, and the fresh air. How do I know this? Well, my brain is back to spinning confections of comical cynicism of the kind you all once knew and loved. Aw yeaaaaaaaa. Watch out now kids. ;)

But alas, I shant write about my beef. I’m not going to bore you all with the gory details. Firstly, it’s all very humdrum once you put it in words. Not half so dramatic as when you’re drowning in the thick of it. It’ll be far more awe inspiring if I just leave it all vague and mysterious like. Neeenoooneeenooneenooo. Ya dig. And then, you know, it’s just not worth any more of my time. I got way better things to do.

Like contemplate how to write a whizbang of a CV. A CV, for those of you who aren’t as cosmopolitan as I *nose in air* is a fancy resume. So I’ve been told. Cuz I joined the professional world abroad, that’s my default term for the piece of paper where I try to list my coolness. And apparently, fail miserably.

See, I think I’ve finally outgrown my CV. The lovely unchanged document that got me my first four jobs is no longer passing muster (or is it mustard? Do you pass mustard or cut it? Strangely, both seem kind of noxious when I think about it. On a side, side-note, you know your writing is rusty when you can’t get your metaphors right). I’ve been applying for jobs with my shiny new status as a FELLOW (if I put it in all caps, you will understand that I mean FELLOW as in of a Fellowship of the Rings, not fellow – a post-op female gone male. Cuz, for all my tomboyishness, I don’t wanna be a boy, thankee kindly). Yes, so after finishing my fancy year at the Ivy League fellowship, I thought I’d be a shoe-in for some high class work. You know, president of the world type stuff. And if not that, maybe Queen of Effortless Snarkitude, or I guess, maybe, science desk editor. But no such luck. No one wants me. Boo.

So I must, of course, blame it on my CV. Cuz it’s not like I’m not awesome. Clearly, I am. (Btw, if I say this often enough, while swinging a pendulum before you, you will believe it, no?) So it is this document’s fault, and the document must be fixed!

But you know what that entails… self aggrandizing. GROSS. I know. I would NEVER do anything like that, awesome as I am. It is TOTALLY beneath me and an insult to my stated awesomeness. I would never DEIGN to toot my own horn, that is so arrogant and I am but a humble soul.

Ok, fine, maybe not. Yes, this blog really is just a glorified platform for my personality and the place where I can live out all my middle-child fantasies of finally being the center of attention. Yes, my awesomeness does include this high level of painful but again, humble, self actualization. *takes a gentle bow*

But… and you knew there was a but coming… as much as I can apparently posture and put myself on the stage here, and occasionally there, for the most part, I’m actually VERY ... Shy? I don’t know if that’s the word. I don’t like talking about my supposed accomplishments. Not because I possess Dali Lama-like humility. But because I’m afraid that if I try and describe them in writing, they’ll actually appear as crappy as I fear they might be.

Take for instance, listing your skills. Saying that I can operate a bunch of software, write, research and edit is pretty unimpressive. I mean, doesn’t every journalist do that? Would I be applying for the job if I couldn’t? What I feel like I need to do in this section is list something some startlingly awesome, like a super hero ability, that they won’t even need to read the rest of my CV and hire me on the spot. But alas, I have none - if you don't count my superhero ability to harm myself in harmless situations. In lieu of that though, maybe I should just list my skillz instead. Like the following:

Master Sarcaster – I am a joy to have in any office cuz I keep it fun. Seriously. You want me.

InTERnetS – I can internet like no body’s business. If it's on the net, I can find it.

Bull****ing – If I don’t know about something, I can do a fairly passable go at convincing you that I do. And I can put in writing so glossily that no one will know that five minutes prior to starting work on the piece, I hadn’t even heard of the technology/country/event etc. Scary, no? As a full fledged member of the media, I exhort you, NEVER TRUST THE MEDIA!

Morphing – I’m disturbingly adaptable. I can go from playing the buffoon to whacking you upside the head with my take-no-prisoners office management ability in seconds. Oh, and I blend into the furniture. And I pass for a whole messload of nationalities and ethnicities, so I'm handy when you need a token person of ethnic extraction around to prove your diversity. I contain multitudes!

Impersonations – I’m not the best with languages, but I can imitate people I know pretty well. It’s always a handy parlor trick when things get slow at the office.

But somehow, methinks this violates CV formatting. Firstly, if it's spelled wrong, as skillz is, it probably shouldn't be shown to prospective employers of whom you are trying to convince of your language skills. Secondly, it's just not done. You know.

So if I can’t just tell the truth for what I’m really good at, then that leaves me the other option – fluffing things up. And I am deathly afraid of being called out for exaggerating. So much of CV and resume writing is really just making pretty ordinary things sound ever so fancy.

“Part of my responsibilities included serving as a crucial structural element in the architecture of our corporate headquarters. Through my very presence alone I lent security and stability to the office environment, not only at the one desk I operated at, but metaphorically, to all desks in all places. Sure, some may say I was just a glorified paperweight, but in actuality, I was the lodestone for the company, if not, may I say, the world.”

You get my drift? And how do you explain that you are really good being able to absorb just enough information from a quick immersion to spin off a story that will bamboozle the layman and only slightly offend the insider, in record time? I am basically, a human sponge. I quickly digest, process, and if this metaphoric line wasn’t gross enough for you, regurgitate vast quantities of information with absolutely no residual benefit. I can learn things extremely quickly, and keep them in my brain as long as it takes for me to hammer out a piece or edit with a degree of scrutiny, before returning back to vacuous goofball in sheer minutes. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, hence my reticence to putting it on paper.

And then, most of the stuff one does or has done at work is pretty blah. I read. I write. I research. I do whatever needs done. Sometimes that may mean swooping in at the last minute to save our newspaper from a frontpage science journalism catastrophe so great it would rival that of Bat Boy Meets Big Foot For Drinks At Fountain Of Youth. But mostly, it means just a regular stream of news writing that isn’t Pulitzer Prize Winning stuff, but nor is it Immediate Deportation Material. That’s actually a pretty good accomplishment for a journalist – I’ve yet to get any of my publications sued or myself arrested – and its not from lack of trying. Is being reliably boring ok?

I dunno. I may not be getting jobs with my current CV, but methinks that if I rewrite it according to the abovementioned mischievous thoughts, I may actually be one of the three big Ins – institutionalized, incarcerated or incinerated.

Not so good.