#i am just acknowledging that this whole premise is fucked up and i'm not sure if it's supposed to be

[nohoperadio]

The date for my annual performance review at work has been set for one month from today. The review day itself is not a big source of stress, it's the management's opinion that I'm good at my job, it's a mildly awkward thing to go through but it's very unlikely to "go badly" on the day.

However!

I gotta fill out the paperwork first, which consists of seven pages, each page representing one of the abstract work virtues ("teamwork", "initiative", "customer service" etc), and for each of these I have to write 3+ concrete examples of things I did over the past year that exemplify that virtue, followed by a description of how each thing I did impacted the business, followed by explaining what lesson I took from each thing.

This is a chore that combines several things I hate hate hate and am bad bad bad at:

homework (the paperwork doesn't have to be done at home, you can schedule work time to do it and this is considered fine, but this doesn't work for me at all for reasons we'll get to in a bit), I'm not even good at structuring my free time when the only things I'm trying to fit into my schedule are nice things I enjoy doing, let alone this

bullshitting, the whole thing is premised on an abstract dreamt-up-by-HR model of how people's jobs work that bears so little relation to reality that it's basically impossible to complete the form without a lot of bullshitting. You have to take utterly mundane and routine moments from your job that don't mean anything and write them up in a way that emphasizes how brilliant and special and passionate you are; also because they ask for an absurdly large amount of examples, you find you spend a lot of time and mental effort figuring out how to reword stuff you've already written elsewhere in such a way that it's not too obvious you're repeating yourself. I am extremely averse to bullshitting to an extent that I fully acknowledge is irrational and unhealthy but I don't seem to be able to do much about it: at uni I would occasionally miss deadlines because I couldn't figure out what my actual opinions were about the thing the essay was about, and I couldn't bring myself to just write an essay endorsing a conclusion I wasn't sure about. I hope that doesn't come across as even slightly a boast, there is no virtue there, it's an extremely fucking stupid attitude to have, I knew that at the time but I couldn't seem to change it. And I'm still kind of like that unfortunately, I can write bullshit but it feels horrendous and takes a ton of will power and progress will be comically slow.

expressing positive sentiments about myself, this one's self-explanatory I think

The result of these points is that I find writing these things so emotionally draining that it often takes like literal hours of psyching myself up/calming myself down just to find the right state of mind where I can even get started, and then often that leads to like, two or three bullet points worth of progress and then I'm exhausted. If this sounds dumb to you, well, yeah. That's why I can't realistically do it during work time, what am I gonna do request a whole day's worth of time and then produce like 30 words by the end of it? I'm not doing that. On top of these setbacks resulting from my unfortunate personality, there's also the fact that my particular role is quite different from most people's in the company but I still have to fill out the same standard form as everyone else, e.g. I rarely deal directly with customers so I have to really reach to argue that stuff I'm doing counts as "customer service", there's a lot of that kind of thing.

I'm not sure if I'm really conveying what I find horrible about this very well, but basically it's: 1] a lot of work, which 2] relies on skills I am extremely weak on and 3] aggravates my weird neuroses in various ways, and all the while 4] the whole thing is manifestly pointless and dumb. That's a recipe for aaaaaaaaaaaaa. If this year goes like the previous two years, I'll spend the weeks leading up to it feeling guilty and panicky for a significant portion of every day and doing that thing where I procrastinate the productive task constantly while not being able to really enjoy the things I'm using as procrastination either; I'll make ludicrously small amounts of progress on a handful of good days, but ultimately somehow force my way through most of it all in one go just before the deadline.

Maybe it won't be like that this time. My general being-a-person competence has been improving year on year for the past several, maybe this is the year I only moderately suck at this type of task. I shall let that sentiment have the last word here, not because it's especially plausible but because it feels virtuous to do so.

(I feel like it would be unjust to write this post and fail to say: I like my job. A lot! It's nothing very glamorous, I work in a bookshop and get paid marginally more than minimum wage, but: I find the work satisfying, I virtually never have the "ugh I can't wait till I can go home" feeling, and there's a small number of people there who I like very much and who like me in return. All three of those are things I literally could not conceive of being true of any job before I started here; when I said above that my being-a-person competence has improved the past few years, my job is a huge part of that. I have more positive feelings towards my work than a lot of people ever get to experience and I feel lucky for that. But this one particular aspect of it which comes once a year always kind of ruins my life for the better part of a month and I really wish it didn't exist.)

#uninteresting #and a bit too long #I put the readmore there because I respect your valuable time #this one's only for the hardcore ventpost fans

[jyndor]

I'm seeing too many people be wayyy too reactive to some people's critiques of how the show is handling Cassian and yeah I get it because most of the criticism of the show has been dumb and xenophobic and racist and so I understand why people may be protective (fuck I'm protective of Cassian and the show) but let's not act like this isn't a deviation from Cassian Andor's characterization in Rogue One. Let's cut the shit and acknowledge that this is a change and a subversion of expectations, whether you like it or not. I'm tired of saying it at this point but since I guess people don't understand that many of us are not actually looking for him to be some perfect rebel soldier white knight, we want the grit and the mess and a lot of what the show is doing but not necessarily in this way.

I think it's just a matter of rejecting the premise they're presenting. I just don't love how it's all about showing Cassian things he should already know?

I don't think it's a matter of poor writing or not understanding where they're going or what the path is going to be - I get what they're doing, they're doing it superbly. I just don't agree with the premise that Cassian has to learn that revolution is good. I don't think that's appropriate for this particular character given what he says in Rogue One about his lifelong fight to a former child soldier. I think it's inconsistent with the intention of the film, to call out people who are for whatever reason sitting the revolution out (even if it's for trauma and exhaustion like it is for Jyn).

I feel like some people who are confused about why people are critiquing this choice by the showrunner and by the writers maybe don't get what we're saying. like guys I swear I understand what they're doing. it's effective - they're saying what they need to say in an intelligent grown way without talking down to the audience. I like that and I think that's why the show is so damn good. I repeat, I think it's the best show on TV. Period.

I know Cassian will grow into being the Cassian in Rogue One. Of course he will and I am sure it will be well done and satisfying and I hope they win fucking awards and praise and get hyped the fuck up. But I don't get why we are starting out with a Cassian who lives in relative comfort (although why he's living on a ship and not in the home he has with Maarva that seems relatively nice for the area I have suspicions but idk) compared to the girl who at the moment is LITERALLY HOMELESS because the cause abandoned her.

She was raised and radicalized by Saw Gerrera. That's her father, she's a fucking weapon - and her story is more appropriate for someone who has had to stay away from the organized cause for trauma reasons but is doing little important acts of Rebellion on her own (which she does). Wanna talk about personal acts of Rebellion? It works better through Jyn, someone who could choose Rebellion but who it wouldn't be forced on.

Whereas Cassian, as the show keeps saying, does not have the option to keep his eyes closed to fascism. So how did he do it from 16-21? And how can he - who has to know that Saw raised Jyn and therefore knows she was a child soldier if not that she was left behind - tell her that he has been in the fight since he was six???

It's inconsistent and believe me I've tried to make it work with Rogue One's characterization of Cassian but idk. How much clearer did he have to be? I'm sorry I don't think that's just headcanon of stans run amok. Trust me I want cassian to be messy and human and raw.

I am not being unfair, I know the show will take its time getting there and I love that! But the starting point feels wrong. It always has.

The intention of Cassian was as a mirror and a foil to Jyn. A mirror to Jyn because they both have a need to destroy the empire. A foil because while Jyn has been running from her true calling, Cassian has been fighting for revolution the whole time.

#cassian andor #dont MAKE me tag this anti-andor because im NOT #its a critique ffs #star wars andor #andor spoilers #rogue one #i will tag as #andorshitpost #because it does feel a bit angry #meta