My Dinner With...

Last night, I had dinner with a bunch of former coworkers. Each is at a different place in his or her life, some successful, some searching for success, or, at least, answers.  I would say I fell somewhere in the middle.  It is both exhilarating and sad to reunite with a group of people who shared your daily life for so many years.  It took me a while to recover from both the up and the down.
 
When in the company of people looking for work, or perhaps more fulfilling work, it is hard to avoid talking about the job search process in between reminiscing about old times. And so it was that I found myself talking to one of the people there about resume words, and quantifying, and translating call sheets into spreadsheets.  It was all very smart, really, it was. And yet, there was something kind of sad about taking the creative out of it all.  While I knew she was right about people understanding numbers more than stories, and while I knew that she was only talking about playing the game as it needed to be played, I couldn't help but resist the idea.
 
And despite my resistance right now, when I sit down at the computer tomorrow, I will probably take her words to heart and draft yet another resume, this time making me the person who has edited x-hundred episodes of television and saved x-many thousands of dollars by being a proactive crew manager. And perhaps this new resume will land me a job in a field I never imagined. The stories behind all that television might matter to me, but the skills I used and honed there are what the recipients of my emails and applications need to see.
 
So, thank you, my dinner companions, for sharing an evening complete with laughs and lots of hugs.  And thank you too, for pushing me to keep moving forward. I imagine that's something we all have to do.