I feel it in my gut, this cold dread, every time an email about annual reviews pops up. It’s a physical thing, like the first time I heard a mortar whistle too close, that same sickening clench. Because I have to talk to Mark. And I haven’t. Not really. It’s been months, a solid six, maybe more, since I properly addressed the fact that he's essentially checked out. He misses deadlines, his reports are… well, they’re just not good. Not for a department head, which is what he’s supposed to be, what he *is*. And I’ve let it fester. I’ve made excuses, told myself I was busy, that he’d figure it out, that I shouldn’t micromanage. That’s the civilian way, right? Give people space. But that’s not how anything gets done. That’s not how you keep a team alive. I just… I freeze. I open my mouth, and the words get stuck, like sand in the gears. I see him, this perfectly nice, perfectly useless man, and I think of all the times I had to tell someone they weren’t making it, that they were a liability. But those were different stakes. Life and death, sometimes. Here, it’s just… spreadsheets. Productivity. And I can’t do it. I can’t bring myself to have the conversation I *should* have had back in October. Now, it’s going to be a formal review, a written record, and it feels so much heavier, so much more final. I’m angry at myself for letting it get this far, for being so soft. This isn’t me. This isn’t how I was trained. I’m supposed to be decisive, direct. Instead, I’ve just been… avoiding. It feels like a betrayal of everything I thought I was. And now the clock is ticking. The HR emails are getting more insistent, the deadlines looming. I know I have to sit him down. I have to. But the thought of it makes my hands sweat. It feels like a battle I’m already losing, not because I don’t know what to say, but because I’ve already let myself down. I just keep replaying the scenarios, imagining his face, imagining his excuses. And I keep coming back to the same awful realization: I don’t want to do it. Not even a little bit. And that, more than anything, infuriates me. What happened to me? This place, this civilian world, it’s making me weak.