There is a fight inside me between the selfish and the helpful, and they are both irrational creatures.
Someone posts ‘I need to borrow a suitcase’ and I get a shot of adrenaline, I can get you a suitcase, I can do that, I can help! and I’m halfway through writing a comment before I stop and think about how:
-I don’t have a suitcase, I’d have to borrow one from the family
-that person is not even someone I know that well
-they are literally in another country
Got myself into a lot of commitments I couldn’t keep that way, you know. Because I can help with the easy stuff, the immediate stuff, the stuff where I just gotta show up, do a simple thing and fuck off. Need help moving? I can drive you. Just don’t ask me to pack. But I can drive you anywhere you want.
I’m the dude who drove an hour to pick up a stranded acquaintance at a rest stop when their car broke down, then drove four hours to get them to their destination, then drove three hours back and got home around midnight with an early start the next day. Because I Could Help.
Then my ambition kicks in with its penchant for overestimating my skills. Someone posts ‘I need help coding a website’. Well, don’t you know it, I coded a website once! I can do that, I can help!
Stop.
-I coded a website once to the best of my abilities
-in HTML4
-it took me months of grinding my teeth just to understand CSS
-half of it is still broken
Then there’s the ‘I can google that for you’ where I go on random quests of finding out whether Appliance A is compatible with Program B even though I own neither one, and can’t judge the relevance of the search results.
I want to help!
But only when it’s easy. Because as soon as you’re asking me for a shred more than I was subconsciously expecting to have to give, the selfish creature comes out. I’m done. I wanna go home. I can’t be bothered. I’m gonna half-ass this and trick you into accepting mediocrity because I’m bored. Wanna go get lunch and do this another day? Another day is when someone else will get stuck helping you.
And forget volunteer work or signing up for helping you ahead of time. It’s gotta be now or never. And sometimes when it’s now I’m not gonna do it because I was planning to play Fallout or something. And if I’m already tired I lose sight of common decency completely and bail (hey Val, if you’re reading this, I totally remember that day I left you to finish all of the dishes by yourself at camp and I am SO sorry, I was a nine year old jackass.)
Maybe I can pin this on an attention deficit disorder. I’m just puzzled at the unpredictability of my reactions. I wanna help. But I don’t. But I wanna. But I don’t.
I wanna be the unexpected rescuer.
Possibly that’s why whenever it’s REALLY easy for me to do something helpful I do it, just to build up compensation for all the times I didn’t help out with something big.
*picks up bag of chips that fell off the shelf in a supermarket and puts it back where it belongs*
I hope you don’t mind me reblogging, but oh my god. This is almost like getting in the head of my dad. This sounds like what I can imagine he goes through. I mean, some differences definitely, but yeah. (I have no clue about You here, but often, unless I need a favor, I can hardly make plans to see my dad. lolol)
But also, I think when it comes to favors, you really shouldn’t be doing anything more than what you’re readily able to. For family or close friends, when they’re really in need, that’s different. That’s beyond a favor – that’s help help.
But favors aren’t supposed to stress you out, and you ideally shouldn’t feel obligated to it. It might suck for the other person if you don’t do a favor when you Could, but I don’t know. I think it’s a favor to me if my issues don’t cause my friends stress. I’ll ask for favors where I think they maay be able to provide it, but if they can’t, no harm, no foul. It’s my issue; I’ll manage. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I know none of this is going to change how you feel about favors and that need to help out when you can, but I can only hope it helps provide some perspective. I’d hate to learn I was stressing my friends out over favors.
Thoughtfulfangirling 