PeNsIvE

End of a busy week...

Finally, the week is over. I just finished my last deliverable for the week and am so ready for the long weekend. Woohoo! Labor day sa Monday kaya walang pasok...wow salamat naman...I really need a break. I feel I've been on a rat wheel at work, not getting any of my planned things done recently, lalo tuloy exhausting ang pakiramdam. Sometimes I feel no matter how hard you work, there is still the same amount of work left to be done as when you've started. Yeah I think I should take it easy. Still haven't figured out how though.

Anyway, I just finished work (3am na pala) and no matter how late it is, i couldn't sleep anymore, I guess I'm way past sleepy. So I just decided to write something here. Even if I finished late, it felt great coz the work I just finished was for the communications we sent to our customers who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. Our general manager approved giving 6 month free subscriptions to our customers in QuickBooks Online Edition who have been affected by the calamity. See our groups' blog. One of the things I love about Intuit is that they really do reach out to the community. It feels great to be working with people who knows that the smallest things can make a big difference.

Meets Expectations

For today, I will break my rule of not mentioning work on my blogs. My annual review at work just turned out which got me depressed, these past couple of days...it read: Meets Expectations. On a scale of 1 to 5, (1 being the highest, how can that be the highest?! 5 is clearly higher...well anyway.) this year I was a 3.The sheet had more information on it but I couldn't help look at those 2 words, and I kept repeating it to myself, over and over and over.

Every year in this company, my reviews have always been a 1...all my life I have always set my goals and for people who know me, this is nothing new. I never think of myself as special -- I've tried to meet my goals through really hard work and lots and lots of prayers -- and the combination seemed to have worked up until this review turned out...but what went wrong? After thinking for a long time about it, I finally gave up. I went and talked to my manager about it and asked why.

I guess I already knew the answer, I kept thinking it didn't make sense to ask feeling stupid asking, especially what if he felt it was rhetoric? But I thought I would not be able to stop thinking about it, so okay maybe it wouldn't hurt, so I did. He said it was usually common when people get promoted to a senior position, which happened last year -- or maybe he was just trying to make me feel better. But it did. I don't know why, somehow I just felt consoled.  I have never been more pleased with myself asking my manager about it, it wasn't about his response to me but the fact that I was able to show that it mattered to me. I'm sure, for all of us, we want to feel that our outputs are valued.

We should always learn to speak up...especially on things we feel are important. Don't let things important to us be diminished by the fact that it is not as important to other people. Loving yourself does not always relate to selfishness. We can never love others unless we start with ourselves.