All of my life, I have always felt the need to fix everything around me. I made sure that I was always available to give friends or family advice when they need it and made sure that I found a solution to their problems. I always felt I was just being nice and then I realized that I was doing it more often than I thought and driving myself crazy trying to fulfil their needs. I never really thought of how draining it was. I think my natural tendency to try to fix everyone else’s problems resulted in me being called the “mom” of the group. This year I’ve decided that I’m not going to do that anymore.
This year I decided I need to work on me, as cliché as that sounds. But I feel strongly that I need to work on taking my own advice and work on succeeding in my life goals and making sure I’m doing okay. I will make sure that I don’t drive myself crazy trying to please anyone but myself. I shouldn’t have to “mom” people who are my age – I should be acting my age and saving all my nurturing for my future child and my baby cousins. Plus it probably isn’t the healthiest thing to stretch oneself to figure out how to solve problems that aren’t your own. I never really liked math anyway, so I don’t get why I spend my free time solving problems.
On the other hand, this doesn’t mean I’m going to neglect giving my friends advice when truly needed. I’ll help them by showing them that they can figure things out on their own with a little help from friends. We’re young so we don’t need to have everything figured out right now. It’s okay to make mistakes and be stupid and careless.
I’m going to live this year as carefree as I can be and try to gear myself towards the most successful track for myself. Besides most of my advice goes unappreciated and expected, so if that’s the case, no one should dish it out if he or she receives nothing in return for helping out.