Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Job skills that aren't on my resume

I just don't get Twitter. I've heard about all of the "networking" (a word that gets used in my vocabulary as often as "synergy") it offers me. I looked at my friends' twitter pages and they had, like, 350 followers and growing by the second. Wow! Networking for sociopaths - sign me up!

Convinced that some well-placed key words would net me some instant employment, I signed on thinking I would learn as I went. But two things happened: (1) It became all about getting the followers by following others, which (2) made me feel like I'm back in high school. And still unemployed

"Where are all of my followers," I whined. I tried promoting people/things/animals/funnel cakes/Gold Toe Socks/soba noodles/beanies and Urkel by including them into my tweets, which often didn't make sense. I tried the "@yomama" and the "#freakinneedajob thingies that would make all of this confusion, well, profitable thereby avoiding a trip to my rejection therapist.

So there I was at work yesterday. I looked at my phone that there were about 100 followers and going strong on my twitter page. "WOW!!!" I said. My boss thought maybe someone wrote something about me - "Google your name," he said. So I did. Same old stuff as yesterday. (Let me justify my frequent self-Googling by saying that I want to make sure that when Robert Downey, Jr. Googles me, he'll see that I'm smart and also important.)

So, what literary bombshell, what gems of wisdom had unwittingly shot like grammar lightening bolts from my fingertips? What could it be?

I couldn't wait log on to twitter to find out who all of these Pulizter-winning journalists were that were my new best friends. I started to notice some similarities. First, they were all women with clever puns for names. Second, most of the girls' pictures were certainly not what any journalist would consider a "head shot" as I know the definition. To their credit, I'm sure these women could do many things with a pen that I can only dream about.

So like a petulant child, I unsubscribed from my twitter account. It's not like twitter-ees were knocking down my snarky door offering me fields full of literary gold and opportunity.

I'm sure my quirky missives will be sorely missed by BadBadKitty and her friends but I certainly hope that they get better, um, job offers than I did.