Well, I’ll be —!

My profile has skills. I do not have skills, but my profile on LinkedIn does.  My LinkedIn profile, which has not be updated for ages, also seems to be found wanting – according to LinkedIn’s clever little collector of arbitrary details out of context. This is one of the many fatuous items I gleaned from my news feed in an idle moment while procrastinating over writing Christmas cards:

Not only is my profile missing a skill, it is missing a skill which is currently trending among others who, like me, have given themselves the job title of Freelance Translator.  A whopping 108 other people are reputedly skilled in the tricky business of legal translation. Well, that’s nice. I am happy for them.

My rebellious brain immediately recalls other skills of which I am quite proud: turning compost heaps is one. Scraping mud off my boots with an old butter knife is another. But since those skills are not trending, I shall not make excessive mention of them. By not mentioning them, you understand, my skill in doing those things does not diminish. It merely means that only those who really do need to know about those particular skills do.  For the rest of the world, they are irrelevant, untrendy and, quite possibly, meaningless.

©2017 Allison Wright

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