Nel Mezzo

I want to linger over the CV. The dreaded CV. 

It is the currency that enables us to barter for positions. We see our achievements and experiences through it. Kids are taught young (I realised when my 12-year-old asked me about it) that they must be thinking about “building it up”.

But they have yet to develop a template for women in their late 40’s returning to the workforce after an extensive hiatus to raise kids. And I’ve looked at a lot of templates. The problem isn’t even the absence of a template, it’s the very premise: Some things are CV-worthy, others – decidedly not.

Most glaringly, from my perspective, is that there is no section in which to write those three little letters “mum”. Its very inclusion would be jarring to the genre. Imagine trying to write that under Work Experience: “Mother, work-from-home, 2006-Present”. And then going on to bullet-point all of the workstreams involved. 

Nor is there a universally recognised way of touting “three living teenagers” as a work accolade, a new skill gained, or even an educational qualification (although lord knows I could sit several GCSE’s tomorrow and ace them, thanks to all the revision support provided). 

For other job seekers, something they have spent an hour or two on, once a month – and for a paltry period – would merit inclusion in a CV. And yet this odyssey, this juggernaut, this BEHEMOTH of an undertaking, dare not speak its name in résumé-land. It is not real enough, worthy enough, skill-enhancing, serious or interesting enough. 

Well, I had to write a CV, and I put it in anyway. You heard me, I put it in. Granted, as an afterthought at the end, alongside “enjoys reading and writing”, like it was just another mildly interesting hobby I sometimes indulge in for an hour on the weekends, but still. 

I. Put. It. In.

Once I start work with my coach, this question underpins so much of what we talk about. Not necessarily using that precise phrase, it often sneaks in by the backdoor, in a disguise. Sometimes it’s called Ikigai (Icky by name, pretty Icky by nature, as far as I’m concerned). Sometimes it’s “what do you see yourself doing ten years from now?”. Sometimes it’s “what brings you joy?”. And countless other versions of probing into the question at the heart of the matter, to which if I had the answer, I would not need the help I was seeking. Like, maybe if the question is posed in some exotic and unconventional way, I will suddenly find myself speaking deep truths that even I didn’t know were buried there. 

This is of course completely unfair to my coach, who proceeds kindly, methodically, supportively through all the things I like to do, think I’m good at, think the world needs (yes, there’s the Icky Guy). But I am impatient and short-tempered: if it were obvious from those components, I really would have figured it out myself, I want to shout. It is visible from space that primarily, I am frustrated that it is not clear to me what I enjoy, that I do not have an innate sense for what I should be doing, and therefore can’t chart a bee-line to it.

You often hear about how people end up in their dream job by accident. They were doing something completely different and stumbled into something. Or they thought they wanted to do one thing, but then started doing another and discovered they were exceptionally good at it, or truly loved it. I don’t think many will have crafted their dream job in a void.

It is like designing your ideal garden, when you have not seen a plant in 20 years. Or writing a lyric love poem in a language in which you only know the phrase “where is the train station?”. How can you describe something when you don’t have the vocabulary, you are unfamiliar with the component parts, and you don’t even know how you feel about it?

Again and again, I hear from well-intentioned givers of advice that I need to be specific about what I want to do. It is apparently a prerequisite to effective networking. The effort of figuring it out, though, is confounding and thwarts me in the earliest stages of getting myself out there. I cannot get a role without knowing what I want to do, and I cannot know what I want to do until I start doing something!

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it takes many weeks to get there, but eventually the solution becomes obvious, even to me: Just do something that sounds vaguely interesting. 

I recalibrate phasers from “my forever role” to “yeah, alright, that’ll do for a bit”.

Two steps forward and one step back. Or maybe even one forward, two back.

Having made the decision to get a coach, and having met with three, I am in a position to commit. In fact, it is an easy decision, as there is one obvious choice. 

So what’s the hold-up? Why do I pretend I am still having exploratory meetings and not in a position to start? Surface answer: Life got busy: kids, holidays, stuff-that-somehow-fills-all-the-available-time-even-though-I-can’t-describe-it. Real answer: Shit’s getting real. Quick, hide under the duvet.

It’s all well and good to say ‘I want to get back to work’, like it’s a crossword you started last week and now come to finish. But the realities of re-entering the labour market are beyond daunting. Having been out of paid employment for *cough* firixventeen years, there are so many reasons to dread the prospect:

• What about all the other things I currently do? How can I possibly fit an actual, real-life job around the school runs, the volunteering, the community stuff, the domestic to-do’s, the endless admin? 
• What do I even want to do and can I do it?
• Should I spend years training in something new? Are any of my legacy skills still relevant?
• What can I really hope for in terms of professional position? I will be entry level along pimple-faced graduates who are eminently more flexible than me!
• What do I have to show for all the years I’ve been out of the loop that is CV-worthy?

Daunting indeed. The metaphorical duvet beckons.

I am broadly of the view that you get the teenagers you deserve. In the vein of you reap what you’ve parentally sown. I don’t mean this in the nature/nurture debate way, I’m pretty sure both of those play a role, and who knows where the line is? But rather if you weren’t reading model parenting books when they were 8, you can’t pick one up when they’re 15 and expect it to work. It’s not that you can’t can’t. If you’re absolutely committed, did everything in the book and stuck with it, well you could probably get some sort of result. But if you didn’t follow a script, embody a philosophy, or practice an approach when they were young, what realistic expectation is there that you will do so when they’re older? Face it, you are a parent who relies on instinct, your current energy levels, and how far into the wine bottle you’ve progressed, for most of your most authentic parenting decisions. 

And when I say you, we all know I mean me, right? 

When they become teenagers, they switch, don’t they? I suppose the change is gradual, but it feels almost overnight. That metamorphosis is fairly well advertised, so I can’t pretend to be surprised by it. Similarly we are promised the sunlit uplands of their emergence as their adult selves at the end of the ordeal, when all the good parenting will come home to roost. (And I’m pretty sure that this is meant literally, something like half of 20-24-year-olds live with their parents…). But what took me aback was the difference between teenage boys and teenage girls. 

I have both, and I can safely say for those who suspect it but need it verified, that girls are harder, especially for mums. I have one teenager, a boy, who is 50kgs of pure cynicism. He is all withering looks and eyerolls. That is, if he even deigns to listen and speak. Oh sure, occasionally he has a lovely, sweet moment (your dad put you up to this, didn’t he?), but unless it’s his Macbeth homework, he does not think I have anything useful to contribute to his world. And let’s face it, even with Macbeth, my advice is sometimes questionable (what are you on about, Lady Macbeth is some sort of proto-feminist symbol?). All of which is sweet, sweet water off the duck’s proverbial back. I see his charm through his sarcasm, his love through his lethargy, his warmth through his scorn. I roll my eyes amusedly in return and think, “teenagers, eh?”.

Then there’s the girl. She does no worse, if anything she has more charm and poise in her lip-curls. She has the semblance of civility. Sometimes it’s just a look, or the absence of acknowledgement. But oh, how it cuts me to the quick. I am instantly rendered insecure, full of self-doubt and walking on egg-shells. I must win her back, be her bestie, gain her admiration. I have this strong need that she must consider me cool, want to hang out with me, enjoy my company.

But good grief, why? After much thought, I have decided it must be because a teenage girl judging me is taking me back to my own teenage self, when the biggest, most soul-sucking, threat, was that of the contempt of my female peers. And she is so much cooler than I ever was at her age – so instinctively I need her to like and approve of me. It is bizarre to me that the strength of that teenage emotional memory is so strong that it infiltrates my relationship with my daughter. 

Or maybe I’m completely wrong, and it’s just that girls are inherently more complicated. Generally speaking, most of the boy’s problem can be solved with food. The girl’s? Aye, there’s a rub.

Whilst we are on the subject of my kids, I will tell you that my youngest is still pre-pubescent (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) and I hang on to that like a lifeline. Dodgy back or none, I still think I can lift him up (reader, I cannot, he’s 13). And he is content to play up to that role, in fact it suits his agenda (which is minimalist). We are symbiotic in this relationship. I desperately need him to stay infantile (what do you mean, you need to shave?!) and he needs me to expect nothing but cuddles from him.

Win-bloody-win.

I can tell from the coach’s face that I must be talking utter bunkum. I’m in one of my ‘exploratory’ zoom sessions, and I have decided to go all-in with my theory that we can just conduct a load of tests and the “machine” will spew out some career options. 

I mean, you know you’ve probably asked the wrong question when it is countered with, “well, that begs the question, do you know what you actually want from coaching?”

“Well, yes, I think I do, but I want to cast as wide a net as possible in thinking about what my next career could be, and to that end, it would be really useful to take the measure of my skills, abilities and aptitudes.” Wouldn’t it? The more doubtful she looks, the more I dig in: Not just personality tests, I insist, but the kind of aptitude tests we make 17-year-olds do to help them decide what they want to do and therefore what they should study at university. And not just that, why not some IQ tests as well, because I’ve never really done those. And obviously let’s Briggs-Myers this baby whilst we’re at it.

Being a coach, she’s delicate in her handling of this unorthodox suggestion. But her response is very much along the lines of, “you don’t need me to do that. Why don’t you try out all those tests on your own, and then when you have the results and you want to explore what they might mean, move on to coaching.”

Several free online IQ/aptitude tests later, I realise she is right. I have some results, and yet they’ve told me nothing, except that possibly I’m slightly above average intelligent. In fact, I don’t even think I trust that conclusion, because my ability to do them is very much down to hours of revision with the kids on their delightful excursions in verbal and non-verbal reasoning….

I then try some free personality-type tests, but those are even more useless. The more questions they ask, the more difficult I find it to summon any concrete sense of my interests, my preferences, my secret hopes and dreams. 

Everything takes on a drab greyness. My new career seems further away than ever, the path ahead ever more obscured. Any notion of a scientific method to solve this has gone the way of the dodo. 

Luckily, this is the point when a completely unrelated community cause crops up, in dire need of a champion, and I can ignore all that depressing self-improvement. Misguided developers, overstretched local authority, distressed neighbours, and lots of legalistic mumbo jumbo: Yup, that will pass the time!

I stumbled across some inspiration a few weeks ago. I was listening to an interview on the radio about one of various lists (long or short, I can’t recall) for the Booker Prize. The person being interviewed, a judge on the panel, mentioned that many of the books were debut novels, and of those, most were from women over fifty. I recently read ­– and really enjoyed – Lessons in Chemistry. I was rather blown away to discover that this was Bonnie Garmus’ debut novel, and that she was 65. I find this deeply, poignantly, reassuring.

Here’s another thought. In Hebrew, the word for life is “chayim” (cf. Fiddler on the Roof). But linguistically, this is a plural form, suggesting that each of us has lives, lived concurrently and consecutively. Life, and the journey through it, is not a singular thing. It is a cacophonous simultaneity of many existences, identities and dreams. There is never just one story. Never just one life.

I figure my first step has got to be enlisting the help of a coach. Dante had Virgil, after all, on his grand tour (ok, I promise that’s the last reference). Something between a life and career coach, I reckon. Someone who can take stock of the totality that is ME, shove it in an algorithm, and produce a suggested list of career opportunities. And maybe help me break a few bad habits I’ve accrued along the way. What, like it’s hard??

Egregious expectations to one side, how do I even find one of those? I can’t exactly post “need a life coach, any recommendations?” on the socials. It’s not that I am embarrassed to admit needing the help. It’s the inevitable consequence of getting unsolicited advice or recommendations from the wrong people (no thanks, not from you). Or worse, getting no recommendations at all, and then having the paranoia of what those same people must think (one of the above-mentioned bad habits). I am a slut to others’ opinions whilst simultaneously being a misanthrope. People are complex, yo.

As a result, here I am on a directory, scrolling through a catalogue of life counsellors, transformational therapists and wellbeing coaches. As I blurb-browse, I discount anyone who uses the phrase “your authentic self” in the first sentence. I got through as much of Radical Awakening as I could, but that notion of some sort of Platonic Ideal version of me, the truest me, that lies buried in the life-rubble and needs to be disinterred, just doesn’t butter my parsnips. I think I have about 17-and-a-half ‘authentic selves’ squatting in my psyche, overthinking, navel-gazing and bickering – trust me, they don’t need any more air-time. 

I find a dozen or so that seem… okay, and email them. Four get back in touch (was it something I said?) and with three I set up “exploratory meetings”.

The first is in person. I somehow manage to go to the gym immediately before, thus arriving suitably gymified (but not too sweaty, cuz, it’s easy, right?), and doing a great impression of a person who does, actually and regularly, go to the gym. Manifesting the person I aim to be, rather than the well-intentioned layabout I can rightfully claim to be. Turns out she did the same in reverse, showing up uber-professional, to project someone serious who wears suits every day. I immediately like that we can own our veneers, and confess to the reality behind them.

We end up having a two-and-a-half hour chat (can’t say I don’t get bang for my complimentary buck!). It strikes me that this is very much a two-way interview, we both have to decide if we want to work together.  So she reveals a great deal about herself, even tearing up at one point as we discuss some of her key life events – I really like her, so I decide it would be gauche to invoice her… OK, that’s 1 for 1, she seems nice, I can see myself working with her. Oh lord, what if they are all this compatible and I have to do some sort of awkward choosing?

My second “coach exploration” is over zoom, and 20 minutes in, I am just at the point of thinking that gosh, I like her too, when she declares that she is probably inadequate to the task. Am I that much of a mess? No, it transpires, I am not messed up enough, most of her clients are in a much greater degree of befuddlement, and her particular strengths lies in helping them to a point of clarity that I have seemingly already achieved. “You are too intellectually advanced in your journey,” she says, which I initially find somewhat gratifying. But I worry that I have worn my “I totally have my life sorted” veneer too well?? I am sure I am, in fact, a basket case. Later, I find myself wondering if “you are too advanced” is the equivalent to “it’s not you, it’s me” in relationships, which of course always means it is you. It’s not a bad way for a coach to turn down a client, really? And if that is the case, I clearly struck her immediately as a nightmare to work with. Ha, I think triumphantly, I am a basket-case!