GOALS UPDATED, NOW AND HERE!

Our HR department has been a right yenta to everybody, reminding us every other day that we need to turn in our goals for the year.

This is something we do on a yearly basis.
Our "goals" are supposed to be 'new-and-improved' every time.
Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound.
Pro-active. With action verbs and out-of-the-box thoughts. Concrete.

......errm?

I'm a beancounter.

My goals do not change, neither does my job.

I do not deal in vague, unquantifiable garbage.

I am not in Marketing, nor in Sales.


How do I write, in acceptable career-speak, that I simply want to do the same thing as last year, without customers or salespeople screaming at me too often, without overmuch oversight, or irrelevant input from other departments, and without being told how to save the planet feed the starving conserve energy husband resources avoid sugar consider vegetarianism sponsor a child pray for peace plus an end to world hunger everybody happy our troops the president and the democratic candidate?

Sorry, that question is a bit long and hence confusing, let me shorten it for you...... "Can't you please shut up?!?"


I know they're not interested in my real goals.

Sleep more. Read interesting stuff. Understand the parshas better. Learn more of other languages. Stuff more into my memory. Eat things I haven't eaten before. Avoid dealing with the inane.

Seriously, I need to get back up to speed with Chinese - I guess that means rereading a whole bunch of stuff, including MengTze, SunTze, Six Records of a Floating Life, Under The Red Banner, plus a whole lot of Ba Jin and the Chinese translation of Ranma½.
And re-watching all my favourite Hong Kong Gangster flicks.

Can do. This is realist and concrete. With action verbs, and without a box. There is no box.

I also want to take a stab at learning Japanese - my favourite manga series have not been fully published in English yet, and I'm desperate to find out what happens next. Some of the tales have not even been officially translated - there are rogue translations on the internet, but these get taken down once the copyright holders discover them and kick up a fuss. Plus many of the manga sites are infested with groisse perverts looking for chibi, ultra-moe, and hentai....... Or little girlie-women who just wuv(!) childish characters with big shiny round eyes and cuuuute big round heads.
Plus flowers, butterflies, widdle doggie-woggies, and other loveable vomit. It's a saccharine swamp out there.

Is there a manga about a fully dressed thirty-year old Hispanic woman who drinks Jameson and arm-wrestles rednecks?

If there is, it'll never be translated.
And I just gotta read it.
Betcha she finds tattoos and piercings just as silly as I do.
With tons of action verbs.