Self Review

It was chilly this morning - probably around 50 degrees F (yeah, you people in the Midwest and Northeast are crying buckets for me, I can tell) - and I contemplated not going to the gym this morning, but my conscience finally won out and I struggled in, did most of my arm and ab exercises (I skipped the last one), and went jogging.

Well, I jogged further than I ever had before without stopping, thought for a little while that I'd do the whole 1.4-mile route without stopping, and ended up shaving 35 seconds off my total time, which is down below 14 minutes. Woo-hoo! It was rewarding, and I'm looking forward to finally being able to jog the whole lap without stopping. (I think I'm now up to about 1.2 miles continuously.) Then I'll have to decide on whether to improve my time, or my distance. (Or maybe I'll be able to do both. I dunno.)

However, I think I'll have to get some gloves for winter jogging; my hands got cold.

Today at work I had to write my self review, which is part of Apple's annual (or I think it's annual) review process.

I always hate writing self reviews. Hated it at Epic, hate it here. I think I hate it for two reasons: One is because of the basic conflict of the document: It is (or, at least, it always seem to me like it is) partly political, partly supposed to help the employee get feedback and do better, and partly just a chance for being honest and thinking about how things are going. I always focus way, way more on the "honest" part, and almost completely exclude any political issues. And I tend to figure that I'm getting or will get feedback from my manager and others about how I'm doing which will be of more use to me than my own evaluation. (I realize intellectually that letting my manager see what I think of my performance is in itself useful, but I don't realize that on a gut level.)

I also have a tendency not to - as my Mom calls it - "toot my own horn". I wouldn't exactly call it modesty, more like reticence, I guess. I look at how I'm doing, decide what I think of it, and put that down. But it often seems like I hold myself to fairly high standards, and that other than a few issues which are more the result of personality traits which I constantly grapple with, it always seems like I meet other peoples' expectations fairly easily.

But, as I think I've remarked before, I always feel mildly paranoid about my job. Back at Epic I spent a couple of years constantly wondering if I was on the edge of being fired. (What a laugh that was, looking back on it. However, I didn't get a lot of direct feedback from many people - in particular my manager - back then, something I remarked on to them at the time, but continued to struggle with. My current environment is better about that.) I've gotten past that edge of paranoia, but I still feel uneasy. Little mental alarms are often kicking in telling me, "You're not doing enough. You're missing something, and people are starting to wonder about it."

(Somehow, I've lived with those little alarms without turning into a workaholic. Maybe having an unpleasant encounter with a professor in grad school who bluntly told me to "work smarter, not harder" has something to do with it.)

The other reason I hate self reviews is that I have this strange blind spot when it comes to remembering what I've been doing over the last few weeks or months. Back at Epic we had to log our time to the hour (quarter-hour, actually), usually for billing purposes, though I think everyone wondered if there were more big brother-ish reasons, as well. I always had to log my time every day - as opposed to people who logged it at the end of the week or the month - because I found it hard to remember what the heck I did two days ago, never mind last week. I always live in the moment in my job, thinking about what needs to be done, keeping lists (mental or written), crossing stuff off, and knowing, if someone specifically asks me, if a task has been completed. It seems to work really well, but makes it hard to, for instance, send in a status report saying, "This is what I've done in the last month."

So trying to remember my accomplishments since I started working at Apple is rather challenging. I remember broad strokes of what I've done, but trying to enumerate certain details and why they were important gets pretty murky. I spend long minutes staring at the computer screen with the form I'm filling out trying to remember, "What other subsystems did I test?" The ones I found important bugs in are one thing, but the ones I went through and found nothing of significance are hard to remember. And that time my boss was on paternity leave, when people were asking me questions about QA; was I really filling in for him, had he asked me to do so, or was I just easily accessible? Hmm.

Anyway.

I worked my way through writing the whole two pages I was allotted, and I think I did a decent job. I guess I usually feel that I do, but I always feel a little like washing my hands afterwards. I either feel, "Euullhh, I've been putting on a show for the bean counters who will decide if I get a raise," or, "I was too low key, and didn't really explain why what I did was important and worthy of recognition." Or, more usually, each one at different times about the same document.

So how do I feel that I've been doing? Well, I feel that I'm doing the job I was hired to do fairly successfully, taken on a few tasks beyond that, fit in well with the group of people I work with, and I need to be more assertive and take charge of things. And, other than times when I worry a lot about how I'm doing, I enjoy my job a lot.

Called my Mom tonight to wish her a happy birthday. I had gotten her the new Sonia Dada live album (which I don't even have myself yet!) as well as Sue Grafton's new mystery novel, which she was elated to receive.

Came home and watched a Law & Order episode from either last week or the week before; I'm pretty far behind on my TV. Also watched the beginning of the second episode of Wasteland, and turned it off as soon as one of the main characters told a man who asked her for a date that, yes, she is Jewish (she's not). Gah. Characters baldly lying for little reason other than plot purposes is a good way to turn me right off of a show.

I also got out the flea comb and combed both the cats, and although I combed out a little flea dirt with some work, I found no actual fleas. Combined with the diminished scratching, I think I can conclude that the Advantage drug has done its job. Woo-hoo! Happy cats.

By the way, Tracy says that the photo of Newton I ran a couple of days ago doesn't show his "infinite cuteness". Aww...