Resumes and Meatballs

I love spaghetti and meatballs. Duh! I’m part Italian; I’d better love it. I think I lose my Italian heritage if I don’t.

My Italian grandmother spent hours making her recipes from scratch.  The aroma from her kitchen was enough to make your mouth water.

Grandma cooked by taste and feel, adding a bit of this and a dash of that until it was just right.  Mom painstakingly translated Grandma’s improvised cooking into recipes with actual amounts so she could recreate these dishes for dad.

Grandma cooked a lot – I mean every single day – and was always prepared. She always had some sauce or meatballs in the refrigerator, ready to go, just in case company stopped by.

As much as I yearn for Grandma’s spaghetti sauce with meatballs, I rarely make it because it is literally an all-day affair.  Quite honestly, who has the time?  And in summer months with outside temperatures reaching more than 100 degrees, I’m not interested in heating up the inside of the house too.

A recent cold wave, combined with Hubby’s sweet request for spaghetti and meatballs, and I found myself bravely attempting Grandma’s recipe. 

Besides, the kitchen was already a mess so I figured it was a great time.

Yes, I procrastinate and make excuses when it comes to this time-consuming recipe.  I love it when it’s done; it’s the process I dread.

Boy, was I out of practice!  The sausage almost burned on the stove while I was sautéing the onions and garlic.  My hand-rolled meatballs looked more like meat blobs.  Just as I was heating the olive oil, I realized one of the meat blobs had fallen on the floor.  Not wanting to waste one of my precious meat blobs, I yelled “Five-second rule!” washed it off and figured any germs would be cooked out by frying.

Just to be clear, I kept that meat blob out of the sauce and ate it for lunch. It was delicious, I might add.

After two hours the sauce was finally ready to simmer for the rest of the day.  The kitchen looked like a food-war had erupted and I smelled like I had bathed in olive oil.  But I felt victorious in my accomplishment and knew my hard work was well worth the effort.

While the sauce simmered I thought about all the other things I dread doing but am happy about once I’m finished.  Cleaning up the kitchen after making meatballs and sauce is high on the list.  So is going to the grocery store, exercising and even going to the dentist.

Career-wise I really hate revising my resume and all the associated job search tasks, such as updating social media profiles.  It’s another one of those things that I’m super happy about once it’s done, yet I procrastinate and make excuses to get started.

A quick poll of my friends tells me I’m not alone here.  Apparently very few of us enjoy this all-important task.

And now that I think about it, resumes and meatballs have a lot in common.  Both are key ingredients in a larger recipe and both take a lot of time to create.

It really shouldn’t be that hard to keep our resumes updated.  Some years ago I forced myself to start updating my resume annually in conjunction with the corporate review cycle.  It’s the perfect opportunity to add new accomplishments while they are top of mind.

Just because I do it doesn’t make it fun.  It still means I’ve got to invest time to think about how to update my information while keeping my resume under two pages.

Social media has added a level of complexity.  We have to update our information on LinkedIn and other sites too.

Yet just like Grandma always sauce and meatballs ready in case she needed them, we need to have our resumes up to date. You never know when an awesome job opportunity might come your way.

Meatballs and sauce in the fridge; current resume on file.  It’s a simple recipe, really.