Why Explaining Gaps in Your CV Is a Sign of Something Wrong With Society
Let’s Stop This
I’ll admit it: I have gaps on my CV that I covered up.
9 months after I quit my first job and tried to create something on my own. The first 5 months after I moved to the UK and worked in hospitality. The 3 months I went traveling in Eastern Europe.
They are all on my CV under something else. Mostly, I extended the dates of the positions that came before those gaps to make it seem like there was no gap at all.
But I’m not alone in this. Over half of Americans admit to lying on their CVs. Why do we do this? Because of society and its sick expectations.
The “Always-On” Culture Is Antinature
We graduate, we get a job, we work, and then we die.
For a good part of the 20th century, this is how humans built their lives. Backed by the economical growth after the Second World War, many countries evolved into what sociologist André Gorz calls “wage-based societies”. In this model, the primary way one gains the right to be part of society is through formal work.
As Paul Millerd points out in his book “The Pathless Path”, we got to this point after a slow transformation in society over the past few hundred…
