Performance review

The leaves drop, the sky gets colder and warmer, the party invites die down and ramp up, the annual performance review lands in your diary when you least expect it - the signal for the office worker that the year is swinging back one full orbit later to where it started.

Performance review time is when you realise that you, despite appearances, are still in school, and that worse, your income is now tied to your report card.

Performance review even sounds funny. It sounds like some horrible mix of:
- people with clipboards watching you have sex
- a critic hiding up the back of the opening night of the play, ready to give a low down in the morning papers
- some boffin making a graph about German technology and how it handles corners

As a result I just can't shake this strange feeling like I should be reflecting on how often, when and for how long I reached orgasmic states (metaphorically speaking) throughout the year, and with which project partners; that I should be ready for criticism about how well I stayed in character, and whether my lines were convincing; and producing stats about myself and how I gripped through bad weather. Hmm.

In actual fact, I recognise that the PR (let's just call it) is in fact about PR. It is the quick, half hour ad-version retelling of your year, with shiny teeth and happy face, to keep your customers on board. To up your margins. Which is really boring.

I think I am one of those modern (postmodern? post-post modern?) types who in fact longs for the confession. Hopes that God exists just so there's someone objective to muse with at the end of life over a cup of tea about the intricacies of life and query about whether organic chick peas from Italy really were better or worse than locally grown full chem beanies. Whether you really should have phoned your grandma more often, or whether that was just gender steretypes, guilt and convention. Whether it was fear or courage that compelled you to make all your major life decisions. Whether you were a good person. And other such moral conundrums. So in the mean time, invests any opportunity for review with all the earnest reflection they can muster. What's that? Trip to the hairdresser, best confess using supermarket product! What's that? Performance review? Better tell them honestly everything I did well and didn't this past year - including all the things I didn't enjoy, all the areas I think I could improve in, and all my suggestions for changing the systems. Just in the hope of coming to an accurate picture of who I am, as much as anything. And try to see whether my perspectives mirror others.

Oh yeah, and try to get a pay rise.