My Annual Review

Finally it's time for my annual review. I've been slaving away for a whole year and the time has finally come. It feels like its been more like 5 years and that I have aged 10 years since then. I was thinking this morning about time and working. It seems as though I have been willing the time to pass by as quick as possible and I am constantly measuring my time in paychecks. It's not that I'm living paycheck to paycheck necessarily but I get such a great joy out of making another payment on my credit card because it means that much less time that I will be working solely to pay off my debt.

Part of the process of the annual review is to do a self evaluation. The questions are pretty generic but are amazingly difficult for me to answer. Its easy to list my accomplishments and talk about all the clever ways I have overcome obstacles and been of use to the company. It's the questions about the future that really stump me. How am I supposed to answer the question, "What are your professional plans for the future?" "What skills would you like to acquire?" "How do you see yourself growing in the company?"

My honest answers to those questions would probably get me fired. "Well, I am really only working here until I get out of debt. As soon as I get out of debt and save up some money, I'm outta here!"

My only other real goal for the future is to buy a chateau (yes, a chateau), have a little vegetable garden and knit or paint or write for the rest of my life. I don't think this would sound great as a career goal either.

As this is my first job, I'm not sure what to expect as a raise. I would be happy with 10% but I'm not sure if this is low or high? My sister seems to think that I should ask for another $15,000 and then at least they would give me $10K but somehow I think she is crazy. The better my raise, the sooner I can get out of debt.

These stupid future questions are delaying my much needed raise. I've had the paper for 3 days and I'm still not done with it. I keep thinking about skills, skills, skills....what skills do I want??? And then I think about Napoleon Dynamite and his bow hunting and numchuck skills and contemplate putting that on my review just for giggles.

Current Debt: $18,036.31

(stupid finance charges)