Resuming My Hobbies

As I sat before my most humble meal ever - half a can of corn and a frozen waffle - it struck me that unemployment had its disadvantages. Waiting for my waffle to thaw (I was sans toaster), another thought struck me. If I was going to get a job I would face that dreadful task of dusting off ye old resume, the undesirable act of making a sheet of paper make me look like the most desirable and hirable guy around.

A friend suggested listing my hobbies so as to differentiate my resume from the competition. It can also take up the ugly, blank space on a skimpy resume, though my resume, I assure you, was not in the least bit skimpy. Seriously. My resume was plenty hefty.

And so I listed my hobbies. Reading and writing.

My friend laughed. She said it made me sound a little creepy, like some guy who spends all his time alone in his room, working on his not-so-great American novel, a solipsistic scribbling never to be published.

I assured her I was not that guy and that my hobbies were wonderfully interesting and rewarding.

She rolled her eyes and suggested I take up some extra hobbies so I would be well-rounded.

This sounded a little deceptive, reminding me of a man I once knew.

He was a member of the local falconer’s club (he attended few meetings, but paid his yearly membership dues); he claimed to be an amateur jazz drummer, though no one ever heard him play the dusty drum set piled in the corner of his garage; and he also boasted of enjoying exotic fishing (he went deep-sea fishing once in St. Thomas where he spent the whole trip puking up his morning mojitos).

And yet, despite the guy’s lack of intelligence and actual hobbies - besides perhaps alcoholism - this very man had been elected to the city council three consecutive times. So if this shifty modus operandi worked for that guy, then maybe…

As an “experiment” I decided to apply to several jobs with a mostly-true resume. The “experimental” part would be a short list of “hobbies.”

The hobbies I listed are as follows: tennis; playing the guitar; and helping with community theater in the inner city. Sports, music and an arts/outreach combination. Methinks I had a hobby triumvirate.

Out of five jobs applied for, I received two interviews. In the first the interviewer did not mention hobbies at all, but was instead focused on real-life work experience.

Whatever.

In the second interview the person briefly mentioned that he, too, played the guitar. That’s all I got.

It was time to revise. The hobbies on my resume now read as follows: teaching CPR to toddlers, kayaking, Brazilian jujitsu and being the official sign language interpreter for the deaf at all Rolling Stones concerts. Now this was a real hobby triumvirate. Plus one. This time around I received five interviews. None of the people seemed interested in the hobbies except for one lady mentioning that she had attended a Rolling Stones concert once.

Then she replied, “Oh wait a minute, that wasn’t the Rolling Stones, it was John Tesh.”

Inwardly cringing, I assured her it was a common mistake.

Weren’t they at all interested in how to sign “Jumping Jack Flash”? Or how to bend a person’s elbow in ways deemed impossible by modern medicine? Were my hobbies not the signs of someone intriguing?

It was time to revise my resume. Again. This time I would lie without mercy.

Hobbies? Oh yes, I have a few. Just take a look at my resume. Self-tattooing Rembrandt’s The Raising of Lazarus on my back (a five-year process). Playing antique bagpipes in an alternative jazz trio. Flossing. Running with the bulls in Spain. Running from the bears in Alaska. Volunteering for Animal Acupuncture USA. Cooking Burmese cuisine with plants from my two-acre garden. Competing in tango competitions in Buenos Aires. Falconry out the ying-yang. Alabama kung-fu. Ugandan ju-jitsu.

And finally…teaching English, as well as basic computer skills and capture-the-flag, to the Rozjuszt, a small group of indigenous peoples living in the Ural Mountains.

I went into my next interview expecting nothing less than to be hired on the spot. The guy looked over my resume and asked if my hobbies were all true. This was good. My hobbies were so compelling and mesmerizing that they were almost beyond belief. I was a demigod of hobbies.

I replied that all of them were absolutely true. Victory was in the air, just like the kites I flew with the orphans every Saturday at the local park (there wasn’t room for that one). He then asked about the Rozjustzt and I told him how I had learned so much from this brave and wonderful people - of how to love again, of how to throw myself into a foreign culture and celebrate it as my own. And also how to dismantle thirty-year old Soviet land mines.

The guy stated that he would love to hire me - I had plenty of work experience and education - but that my hobbies would not leave me enough time for such a demanding job.

I wanted to shout back that my hobbies were a sham, that I had never run with the bulls, that the Rozjuszt were an entirely fictitious people I created and that I had an intense fear of needles and alternative jazz trios. I wanted to cry out that I was a fraud, a pathetic fraud, and then crumble before him in a saline pity-party.

But instead I politely thanked the man for his time, mentioned I was late for a fencing match and exited.

Suffice to say, I have since edited my resume once again. It has come full circle. Hobbies, you ask? Reading and writing.