A couple days ago I talked about goals. About what I had to do this week and how energized I was and I can’t even remember what else.

Since I shared this with you, it’s only fair I show you my self-evaluation, aka my performance review. This was always the most excruciating piece of my work life, the need to annually self-scrutinize, self-aggrandize, and/or self-flagellate, and then hand that document in to the boss so she could put what I’d written into her own words (if she agreed), then decide how the merit increase pool was going to be allocated among the staff, and situate my performance accordingly.

Self-evaluation: Deborah Wassertzug

This week, Deborah had a number of stated goals. She emailed them to herself and in an effort to not lose the email, kept marking the message unread. Judging from the weak progress towards these goals, it may be that the email actually was unread.

EATING: The stated goal was nominally achieved. Scale results are not forthcoming.

EXERCISE: Excellent progress towards this goal, with three gym visits, and the purchase of a monthly pass instead of a class card. Deborah intends to “get to at least one exercise class this weekend.”

READING: Exhaustion from exercise continues to plague Deborah’s attention span for much beyond laundry, grocery shopping and cooking, but a long wait in a doctors office did yield some progress in this area.

WRITING: One critical email sent. One poem written. (Poems were not in the original goals document.)

RESEARCH: After sending email to her collaborator regarding lack of progress in this area, Deborah did make progress, finding audio recording software that is available across Windows and Mac platforms.

TRANSLATION: The stated goal of “finishing half the job” was exceeded by the power of two – job completed. Deborah seems to be learning that having a paying gig will trump anything else that needs attention.

CONCLUSION: Deborah is a cheerful, though easily distracted, person whose goals could stand some fine-tuning. She could cut herself more slack. She is trying too hard to rebound. Or, she is not trying hard enough, she still doesn’t know the first thing about writing goals, and she hates self-reflection.

My point is, I feel like I’ve done this to myself many times. Lists are fine. Goals, maybe not right now.

I’m going to go ahead and give myself a 2% cost of living increase, and a firm handshake.