Busy and Busy in Trichotomy

The last two months have been quite hectic, as I prepared my promotion packet. In my company, the decision of whether one gets promoted does not lie in the manager, but rather lies in a group of engineers and technical managers who don’t know you, but whose job is to evaluate what you, your colleagues, and manager say about your work and yourself in a ‘performance packet’, and then make a decision based on that. La Professeure said its like tenure application, but covers a shorter time span.

As a result this process, the creation of these ‘performance packets’ is a huge time-suck in our company; basically when performance evaluation season comes along, everybody who is up for promotion’s productivity decreases by half to work on their performance packets. My manager has had very good track record of getting himself promoted (it’s been 4 for 4 so far) and had very good guidance for my packet, but it took me working through two weekends plus the week in between to get it finished. It’s a bit like writing an academic paper - I start small, add details to it and it’s 2x too long, and then condense the essential point to make it just right. So, it’s been done now and I am happy just not to have to think about it and get back to doing my job.

I hope I get the promotion, if only because I would rather not to have to go through this process again.

In the mean time, the amateur musician group had another couple of concerts and the attendance was huge - I’d say half the people there were new. Though it could simply be due to the fact that the Treasurer organized a large ensemble. I hope those people come back; even if only half of them come back it’ll be a good boon to the group. On the other hand, the Zankel hall tickets aren’t moving too well; last time i heard only 1/3 of the tickets were sold. Hopefully it’ll get more sales as the event draws closer, but this weak sales I think highlights the problem with the organizer’s direction for the group - he is trying to walk a tight rope between making the Carnegie Hall concerts sound professional, but at the same time not antagonize too many long-timers. I’m not sure he did it this time. A third of the program consist of people who didn’t audition and those who got dropped (like the Japanese pianist or the Dramatic Sop) were not amused by it. And I can understand if he’s dropping them to include people who maybe don’t come as often but are very good, but he including someone who isn’t even that professional-sounding, and included a chamber orchestra playing high school orchestra material.

Long-timers are stepping up their music salon hosting. The ENT pianist hosted one in his new house, and he has a gorgeous Beckstein; it was a lot of fun to play on. We all took turns, and It was nice that a lot of amateur group people came out - Marius, the Shepherdess, her actuary friend, the two Japanese pianists, Taiwanese pianist, Dramatic Sop, and the Jazz pianist all came out. It was a lot of fun. I also got roped into playing in an outreach program at the Memorial Sloan Kettering center. These are always fun because there is no pressure and other musicians are all very casual. At the end the jammed to “careless whisper” just because the saxophonist knows the riff. So at least I’m glad I still have some collaborative performance outlets.