I’m feeling very frustrated. I need to rewrite my résumé in two flavours. One slanted with all the business skills that I am told I have, and the other slanted towards the teaching and mothering skills I have. The trouble is, I have no idea what those skills are!
Well that’s not strictly true. I think it is more that I just have no idea what is needed to express them in a way that would be acceptable in a résumé.

And another thing, three days ago the space bar on my keyboard wouldn’t work so I dismantled it and removed the fur ball that a generous four-foot had donated to the warmth of my typing. But now the space bar doesn’t want to work the same way and feels all wonky and stiff! To add to my frustrations my trackball died last week so I have to get used to using mouse again. Not being able to type as freely as I am used to and with the keys making an unfamiliar clatter and having to wibble around with a mouse, is more disconcerting that I had imagined it could be!

However, that is merely a means to avoid looking at this résumé situation!
Business skills: a familiarity with Microsoft Office products – I can’t claim that I am particularly skilled as I have never had any formal training past that of looking up stuff in the help files and on the Microsoft Technical Database (a very handy resource if one can work out what one is looking for) and by subscribing to a variety of useful email lists like Neat Net Tricks or WOW. I suppose I could put in the four attempts I have made at building my own business, which have all proved less than successful, as evidence that I’ll give things a go … but how do I express that I really loathe trying to sell things that I would not use because I think they are overpriced or I am just too lacking in that ‘killer instinct’ that enables one to close a sale or approach someone for a contact?
Heavens, the only time I actually got intensely motivated to sell something, it was because I was interested in the whole process of incense and the history surrounding it but while I was going for small and elegant, at the same time another group with more business savvy walked off with a similar idea and now are one of the biggest suppliers of incense in the city! (But I did find out some interesting stuff about incense, where it comes from, how it was used and how it is made into stuff that is produced so cheaply and burnt in so many places.)

As for the teaching skills, I think I can remember how to plan a curriculum of work, and a teaching outline … I think. But I know I can tell a mean story and usually captivate my audience (why is it that most children between the ages of 6 and 12 seem to like ghoulish bits and bizarre natural science facts?) so that they will sit still long enough to get the punch line. Apart from that, I think my only claim to fame on that score is that I have raised two reasonable human beings while managing to do most things on a strict budget, and have even been known to get the vegetables on the table at the same time as the meat loaf and gravy.

But how does that translate to writing them on a résumé?