I shall preface this sad tale by stating that I might just be here to serve as a terrible warning to others.



As I've mentioned before, I was laid off in February.  I've been getting  by on unemployment, and had a couple of interviews, but no real bites.  It's at the point where I'm probably going to move back in with my folks in August when the lease is up.

Originally my resume had my job as "2006-Present."  And I left it that way for a couple of months.  When April came around and I still hadn't gotten any action, I felt guilty letting people think I was still employed and switched it to 2006-February 2009.

At least, I thought I did.

Microsoft Word registered everything as clean.  I sent out two versions - one for jobs up in OC, and a second for jobs in San Diego (with my parents' address).

I recently sent an updated version to my roommate, who's going to ask around at her new place of employment.  "Hey, you typo'd Orange and February," she said.  "I fixed them."

I...what?

I opened up the resume.

There, in all its heinous glory, stood my error.

FEBUARY.

Yeah, wanna know what my prior occupation was?  The thing listed right underneath Febuary?

I was a copy editor.

As in...how the hell did I miss that?

Granted, I hated copy editing.  Hated it.  Possibly was not all that great at it.  BUT - BUT!  I can spell.  I have spelled February right on dozens of other occasions. 

The main question here (beyond how I could miss something so mortifying) is why my roommate's version of Microsoft Word picked it up while mine didn't.  They're identical as far as I know. 

The weird part:

Looking through my sent box and opening up sent files (and oh, how mortifying looking through all those awful mistakes sent out...) there's a point where February was spelled right.  So I don't know when it went all screwy - I apparently did get it right the first time, but then somewhere down the line (um...April?  March?) it was changed or I changed it or...whatever happened.

The moral of the story?  I feel ridiculous.  My much-better-qualified friend from work, laid off at the same time I was, didn't nab any more interviews than I did.  So maybe it didn't hurt me.

This really has nothing to do with writing, although I've been staring numbly at the story on the screen ever since I saw the error.  I've seen far worse.  Hell, I'm sure the people reading the resumes have seen stuff written in Ebonics.  But it's had a mind-numbing effect.

Oh.  Minor update.  Roommate says she was looking at it on Linux; when she switched into Windows, Word didn't catch the error.  What the heck is that?  Kind of doubt all those businesses were on Linux so maybe it's something people will ignore...urgh.



All that work I was planning to do on Escapist...didn't happen.  I think I'm just daunted by the amount of work that needs to be done, and I'm just not sure I want to take the plunge on the story yet.  I realize that at some point you gotta say I fix dis and just...do it...(like sending your work out to agents, eventually) but I am just not that strong of mind yet.

Once I actually establish what needs doing it'll be easier.  It's just working out that last kink that stands in the way. 

(Obviously I'm a bit of a commitment-phobe.)