Me. Family. Others.

I had a good rant yesterday but I still didn’t get right down to the bottom line. It seems that I am easily derailed from my original line of thought. I get easily distracted these days.

My mind is working overtime – I have so many ideas and so many things I want to do. It’s like hearing voices in your head and you don’t know who to listen to first.

So what is the bottom line? I guess it’s that I am not involved in something bigger than myself. It’s that whatever I do now, it’s all just for myself mainly. I can’t even really say I am helping my family.

I’ve had it so easy. My parents were always able to provide for us. The one time or another that we’ve been in crisis – I didn’t truly feel it. They’ve never really put the burden on my brother or on me, to take over support of the entire family. There never really was that pressure. Okay, so maybe I had it easier than my brother did.

When I took my first job with the NGO, I was never required to give any portion of my salary to the family. Except to pay for the water bill – which isn’t that big. Well, for one, my pay – there really wasn’t that much of it. I knew that my mom would’ve just preferred that I save the extra that I got. Which I didn’t do, by the way. When my brother started working at a call center, it was already clear how much of his salary was going to the family. I didn’t hear him complain though.

When it was my time to earn bigger, well, they still didn’t really require anything from me. I don’t know exactly when my dad asked me to eventually give a fixed amount to my mom on a monthly basis – but even that wasn’t strictly implemented. Mom doesn’t remind us you see. She’d take what we’d give. Oh and the amount was less than half my brother’s contribution. For awhile I paid for our ISP, because I really was using it most of the time, but even that sort of was taken out of my hands eventually.

So I was already earning as much as my brother was but he was still was the only one religiously contributing to household expenses. Yet he’s still the one who was able to save up – ugh his savings is probably ten times more than mine!

My dad sort of reminded me about this. And he really does have a point. I should pick up some of the slack (my terms not his). So for the last two months, I’ve been contributing to the family income. Still not much, but at least there’s some.

And I’m thinking of doing a little more.

I’ll probably volunteer to cover the water bill again. No way am I going to shoulder electricity – leave that to the one who has an airconditioned room. Or maybe it should be the phone/Internet bill this time around? We’ll see.

And since I am the last person to leave the house at daytime, I will clean up. Nothing too exhausting – just sweep the flour, dust the tables, and keep everything in order. That way I’ll get my brother off my back too about his having to tidy up when he gets home from work. Maybe I’d be more keen on cleaning up if we had one of those Miele vacuum cleaners. Nah, I don’t think so, not really.

Maybe when I succeed in this, when I do even just a little for my family, I’ll be able to crawl out of  my shell once again and step out onto the bigger world. Maybe then I can reconnect with others and do something for a cause that’s bigger than just myself.