When you 'skip' a fair chunk of your growing-up years - say year 17 to year 21 - it is a subtle but inevitable by-product that you miss a lot of, well, stuff.
Although my ability to navigate social etiquette is of a near flawless standard (yes, really, it can be), my judgement of reasonable and unreasonable behaviour is somewhat lacking. Somewhat missing, to be frank.
Being an ex-subject of King Insert-Vice-Here does not make one a doormat. Well, it should not. But sometimes it's hard - for me, for one like me perhaps - to judge when a doormat-type situation is in occurance.
Example 1.
Friend: Can you go and grab my cup for me and fill it with water?
Me: (feeling that this is nothing but a reasonable request)Yep no probs.
Friend: Ugh that water isn't even cold!
Me: realises suddenly that this was a doormat moment, probably punctuated with little doormat moments on either side.
It sounds simple, but doing something for someone that they could just as easily - if not easier-ly - do for themselves, is not only a doormat moment but a pointless one in ally. I came to realise that the number of morning breathers spent mug-fetching and errand running has increased, and even to the point that my own mug has itself been surrendered in a people-pleasing gesture.
This occurred to me just the other day, that my free time can become easily stapled down with little tasks and journeys and errands for people who could well do with doing it themselves.
It sounds largely petty, but realising that it's not is the first step to liberation from this.
Knowing where the boundaries are, however, is another matter altogether. Perhaps that will take years of errands and non-errands, concessions and refusals, before I truly grasp the concept of the reasonable request of a friend.
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