This is more about me than you might want to know, but if I don’t post it somewhere, it isn’t likely to happen.
I dream of being a personal assistant. For several years I served as a part time personal assistant for an aging business tycoon. Not wealthy; he was a tycoon in the sense of how I treated him. What he paid me had no bearing on my service. It was nothing more than the means to making sure I had the resources to keep on serving. He didn’t buy my loyalty. He took advantage of my natural instinct for loyalty. He was honest with me, and he got it back with interest. He respected the limits with which I had to live for the sake of my own sanity. In return, even when I didn’t like his choices, I respected them and genuinely tried to make things happen. I was able to offer a wealth of patience for his personal foibles because I was painfully aware of my own. When he changed his mind fifteen times regarding a particular matter, I acted on whatever he said he wanted at the time.
The skills he found useful: a clean driving record and attentive chauffeuring; conscientious maintenance of this cars and other equipment; a sharp eye for details inspecting all the real estate and facilities he managed; keeping gold-digging family members out of his stuff; personal security, safety and health watch; chasing all sorts of information, particularly on the Net, researching the best deals; a great deal of effort to modify his computer and his office so he could use it as he wished; a broad acquaintance with the Liberal Arts so as not to bore him when he felt like chatting; regular reports on whatever world affairs interested him. I assembled kit furniture expertly, moved large items at his whim, dug up a sewer line to save him some money, cooked when no one else would or could, fixed countless little things around his home, kept track of his agendas and when I failed at something, he was the first to know. More than anything else, I was his friend.
It had nothing to do with his worthiness, and everything to do with his trust.
I’d love to do it again. I’d love to serve someone who traveled more, needed more of my time. I know how the train systems in Europe work, and I can get by in several languages. I’m quite willing to endure a significant level of deprivation when that’s what the mission requires. I’ve never forgotten how to sleep on the ground, eat what was available, and move at a moment’s notice on little sleep. I have physical limits, but I’m not one to whine. The worst thing you could do is keep me in the dark about my job, but I have no curiosity at all about things which are none of my business. I’ll take care of the time-consuming details of things while you devote your attention to what matters most. My greatest strength is my ability to report honestly whatever it is you want to know, and not try to sell you something I might want you to believe. I don’t take myself that seriously.
I won’t suck up to you like a slave, because you don’t need that. Nonetheless, I will tend to sacrifice my comfort for yours because I am simply not all that hung up on this world in the first place. I have no worldly ambitions except to make you look good. There isn’t much I fear. I’d be frugal with your money, and accept only what you willingly offered. My loyalty to you here is based on my loyalty to my God up There. I’ll be on loan from Him. He’s the only one who will outrank you in my mind, and is the only one to whom I’ll snitch on you, since He’ll know everything anyway.
You get the idea. Traditional resume here (site now gone).
Clever…