How to reach your goals step-by-step

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Ever notice how a little project grows into bigger projects? The latest project at our house is replacing the bathroom ceiling. The roof was leaking and the bathroom was the main target of the drips. We hired Evan from Poland Construction who uses my son, Dan, as a carpenter, to replace the roof which wasn’t new when we moved in almost 20 years ago. In the process, we found a new project, the bathroom ceiling.

Evan and Dan removed bags of moldy and wet insulation from the attic during the construction period so not only did we have a ruined ceiling, we had almost no insulation over the parts of the bedroom part of the house.

The Weekend Project

My husband’s solution would have been to paint over the ceiling which had cracks, peeling paint, and mold with a mold retardant paint and be done with it. Since I have suffered from sinus issues my whole life which are only getting worse, I turned to Dan, who would replace the ceiling with waterproof drywall after removing all the old stuff and reinsulate.

Dan’s schedule was busy and we finally settled on this weekend as the start of the project. Dan thinks through things and he put poly up in the whole bathroom before he started pulling things down and he isolated himself with the trash cans so the debris and dust wouldn’t spread through the house. It took all of Saturday to get the ceiling down and new insulation up. Yesterday, Dan put up the new drywall with the help of several tall friends.

It still needs mudding and finishing which should get done this week. We are using the downstairs bathroom to shower in now. I suddenly realized yesterday that this is Thanksgiving week and the dinner is here but no one needs the shower working  for that and so I breathed a sigh of relief.

We bought this house to remodel – in 1992 and there is still the kitchen to do but other projects have always taken precedence before the room I would like best in the house — the Kitchen.

Focus on the steps

It is easy to get disillusioned when your goals start falling apart. You want everything and you want it NOW! I talked before about learning to roll with the punches. I’m an expert. You, my reader, only know the parts of my life I share here but believe me, I am no stranger to challenges.

How do you move forward when every step you take seems like another challenge? You do it one step at a time. You can’t solve everything at once. If your job search is stuck, start with what you can control. Start by examining what you are sending out. The basis of every job search is still the resume. Many people will tell you that you can skip that step because there are so many other tools but I will tell you what the resume does for you.

Completing the resume first forces you to focus on determining your talents, accomplishments, and the value you bring to the employer.

• The resume gives you the basis for your social media profiles on LinkedIn and other platforms.
• The resume gives you something to share when you are networking or conducting informational interviews.
• The resume gives your the information in a well-written and keyword-laden format for any online applications you are completing.
• The resume gives you talking points for the phone interview and every interview after that.

I have wanted a new kitchen since the day we walked in the door to this house with the first box. Everything else seemed to come first. It was tempting to skip the roof and the bathroom ceiling and go straight to the kitchen as the next project and the money spent on those would have been a good start to a nice kitchen but it would have been backwards. I could have ended up with leaks in the new kitchen or worse.

If you proceed step-by-step with your job search, you will have peace of mind and if you start with the resume as your foundation, you will reach your goals of finding the new position.