Not a Tweet, This One

My book, my baby [6 Books in Search of a Point] is on the virtual shelf at Amazon, and the next book is a birthing in my brain. Actually, there are several in this old brain now that I know I really did it. And I can do it again. And I will do it again, maybe several times.

I wonder if I'm the Grandma Moses of writing. It feels like I'm a late starter, but then I was out gathering experiences to be gleaned for these books -- non-fiction, fiction and more poetry.

Life feels new again. Recognizing the seventeen year old living in my heart who has waited for this moment to be let loose is like looking in the mirror and seeing your parents -- a big shock.

At least I've started writing anew.

Talk About Shooting Yourself in the Foot!!

You’re looking for a job. You update your resume and send it off. After you’ve emailed out about 50 copies, you notice that in your “public service position” – the most recent employment – you left out the “l” of the word public. Oops! Won’t get hired by any of those employers, now, will you?

Too often, job seekers will ask a friend to look at their resume, but the problem is that those elusive errors that slip right by us jump up and bite the HR professional in the nose. How about items on the skills list that are repeated, such as:
· Strong work ethic
· Attention to detail
· Team player
· Self motivated
· Attention to detail
This is just sad. Some human resources people will call regarding this resume and give a heads-up that something is wrong, but most won’t. They will just file it in the round file, and the applicant will never hear why.

There are people who have transposed numbers in their telephone or email. There are folks who have misrepresented themselves as working longer at a position, by error, because the year was mistyped. There are applicants who make a tiny error in their on-line application or resume to a big job bank, like www.bayareajobs.com or www.caljobs.com and will never get a hit from that place, because employers count errors in as part of the whole person.

Sure, looking for a job is a time of nervous energy taking the place of clear thinking, but when it comes to being judged by the document you submit, don’t let your stress get in the way of perfection. Hire the professional whose job is not only to write you well, present you well, but also to make sure that it is error-free. The money that you spend to get your resume written is an investment that will be returned by more interviews and an earlier hire date.

Salle Hayden ©2007

Chain of Changes

How quickly everything can change. One day you think that the sea is smooth and the sails are furled and less than a day later the sails are in tatters and the storm has passed over and you're trying to catch your breath.

The family grew the same day of the last post, and became oppressive because there was a terrible financial chasm growing between the debtors and the creditors, and I can only assume that the oppression was one of the reasons that the family of two that grew to five needed to shrink by one as of October 17. Isn't that strange? One month of growing darkness, squalls and eddies and now the sea has regained her calm, even if there is flotsam and jetsom to be pulled out and salvaged.

As life goes on, and I gather the crew for cleaning up and setting straight in the aftermath of this hurricane, I suppose that my heart is out there floating and will be recovered as part of the project. Today, it just is difficult to breathe at times, and I feel that catch at the back of my throat, but then I take the next right step and smile.

Random Thoughts

This past week has been just a quilt of phrases from songs, those running through my mind and those I've heard sung at me. More than once someone sang "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" when I revealed where I came from. And I hummed, whistled and sang "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" more than once as well, sort of in self defense one time.

Watching co-dependence in action, and watching co-dependents using the tools we've learned about how to maintain boundaries and how to show respect for ourselves and others has been a real education.

I actually have been doing the homework assignment. It sort of surprises me, but maybe I am ready to go back to school. Maybe I know how to use and value the information this time.

Time to get on the plane soon. I must pack up the computer and get on my way.

Natural Fabrics and Hand Dyeing

Nancy Sun saw a television program that changed her life.

Nancy spent fourteen years in the high-tech industry. When she became the mom of twins, and decided to stay home with them, she had a lot of time to watch TV (Not!), but last year she did happen to catch a story about indigo -- a natural plant dye -- being used in a hand process, in central China. She traveled to the rural village where fabric is still being dyed this natural way and decided to start an internet store to import the fabrics. She designed some clothing and after contracting to have it made there, she opened her shop.

Only a little more than a year later Indigo Passion by Sun is taking off. These traditional styles fashioned of natural cotton or linen and dyed by hand in the same way it was done over 500 years ago are now available. I love the beautiful colors that are available and the idea of supporting hand-crafted products available right here at reasonable prices. You can see a partial catalog (the site is under construction as I write this) at www.indigopassion.com.

Please visit and say "Salle sent me."

The Importance of Food

My brothers became gourmet chefs, for their private consumption, because they missed the food. I became a gourmand consumer of vast quantities of everything, because I missed the food.

It was always only the food that brought us together -- good, sometimes great, food. I remember rolling pie dough with Daddy and icing cakes with Mom. I remember Mommy-made cookies and Daddy-made candy -- all kinds of candy -- at Christmas time to give for gifts, to ourselves mostly.

For instance, there was that Thanksgiving that we sat around the ten-foot diameter table that he built for the occasion, with 14 adults in a circle, and the 10 kids in the other room at card tables and TV trays. We started with hors d'ouevres of bits of things on crackers and hand-trimmed toast with wine. Then there were shrimp cocktails for the adults and tomato juice for the kids. Three bottles of wine accompanied the meal. There were two 20-lb turkeys and too many side dishes -- two kinds of stuffing, apple/raisin and chestnut; three kinds of cranberry sauce (two canned, one with berries and one jellied, and fresh chopped berries and oranges); hand-mashed potatoes made with cream and 1/2 a pound of butter with giblet gravy; candied yams with marshmallows melted brownly over the top; two green bean dishes (they had been picked one by one from the grocer's bin) with fresh mushrooms and slivered almonds (depending on the whims of the chef); corn coblets dripping in butter; a large mixed-greens salad with tomatoes, croutons and hand-shaken oil & vinegar dressing; a large dish of olives, three kind of pickles, carrot sticks, celery sticks, green onions, radishes and cucumber sticks; fresh rolls hand-punched and risen with real butter or margarine; and three kinds of pies for dessert -- pumpkin with fresh whipped cream, apple with cheddar cheese and cherry with ice cream,

And then, three hours later, after dinner, while the kids were running around in the twilight, the adults sat around the table and discussed politics, religion and other taboo subjects before running wet fingers around the rims of singing wine glasses and breaking into song and laughter.

This is why food is important. It brings people together.

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

Redefining oneself can be arduous work. First of all, you need to know who you were. When that face/mask is so amorphous that you're only seeing through a smoked mirror, well, where do you go from there?

First I was a big sister, with all the flotsam and jetsam of the sibling sea. All too soon, that was an unnecessary title with unnecessary duties as my little brothers grew to be little people. Next I was a student, but that was less than taxing. If I showed up, I was in the top 5% of the class and didn't even break a sweat (except from the bicycle rides to school, being perpetually late, and the allergies I was painfully aware of during field sports).

Then I was a gaijin, teaching in Japan for five years. When I returned to San Jose for working on my Masters, I fell back into teaching as an easy out from "working." My standard phrase of response to "How do you like your job?" was, "Don't tell anyone, but I would do this for free, if I didn't like eating so much."

Oh, I'm forgetting the drama/comedy mask of actress that started when I was "Sarah Bernhardt" before my brothers were born until my last stage appearance in Japan in pantomime skits with my teacher. The acting phase spanned about 35 years in all.

I morphed from teacher into program director in such an easy way that I didn't recognize that change had occurred until after the fact. Then I was forced into another category, that of the unemployed, where I joined many of my former colleagues in the non-profit field serving refugees and immigrants. So I decided to become a catalyst for change and studied neuro-linguistic programming as my vehicle for doing that. That never got off the ground. Now I am studying counseling for alcoholics and drug addicts (seems like just another form of social work to me, with all the rules and case management details keep track of for answering to the government), but something has not yet jelled.

Let's go back a few steps. Dream #1, when I graduated from high school, was to return to that high school and teach English and drama. About 25 years later, without even remembering the dream until I was in the second year of being there, I achieved it via a slight variation of teaching Japanese and directing the semester productions. Okay, next! Dream #2, I would reconnect with my estranged son. This took about three years to begin and a total of eight years to achieve, but we are now the friends I promised him as an infant that we would be. Dream #3, I would perform on the radio as announcer and do "voice-over" work. This one took less time to achieve, about 18 months. Dream #4, I would have my own business. Now we come to my current dilemma. A little over a year ago I determined that this would happen, and took the steps to get it going. That's not the problem. I have an entity name, pay taxes and have existed as Upstart Services since April 2005. That's not the problem. The problem is (ta-DAH!!) what does my business do?

I started writing resumes, but people who need resumes have no work, hence no money. Can't get rich that way. Then I tried selling mobile homes. Selling is not my millieu. Then I started a "behavior change" business, but who am I to tell people what they should or should not do? Nope, not for me. Now, using the NLP with ADAC training I may, in the far distant future, open a practice helping people suffering from their own choices to know that they can have better control than that. But that's the future, not today.

I have written since I could hold a crayon. Words have always been more interesting than any picture of a tree or a horse. Today I am a writer of poetry for myself. Many people have said, "Publish!" but I'm just not ready to let people read my bare, naked words to themselves. I want to record and share the sound. But I can help others find their own voice, through listening to their desire to communicate and guiding them to the words that will bring clarity to their own message. Now that I am a compassionate listener, I can wed this to my production skills and build a business of helping -- as I want to do -- by guiding the busy writer toward his or her own voice.

Yes!! That's it. I'm an editor. This feels so right.