With Opened Eyes I See The Truth

It only just occurred to me that, indirectly, I have become an unwitting tool to be manipulated.

And this stems from the fact that I'm just too plain nice. I can never say no. To (almost) anyone. At all. The rare few instances where I put my foot down is only if (a) I'm too busy to involve myself in their work; (b) I have a deep hatred for the person in question; (c) I feel extra lazy; or (d) I've no mood to do it.

It's not that I'm being used by people. In fact, I'm allowing myself to intervene in their work simply because of a few reasons, among them being:

(a) what they're doing is a total piece of crap which, IMHO, I feel can be done much better if they put in the extra effort;
(b) they need "guidance", or so my head says;
(c) I feel somewhat sympathetic that they're close to a crazy predicament if they don't get it done;
etcetera etcetera, yadda yadda, gab gab.

So phooey. I've made myself do something that's not benefiting myself or the other party. (Benefiting them in terms of allowing them to do a good job)

So it's high time I made a clean fix about this problem. This day forth, the help you want from me is a selective process. If I can see that it will benefit both parties in some ways or another, then yes I will gladly help you. But you need to pull your own weight as well. Or else, what's the point of me helping you doing it?

There are only a few rare exceptions in this rule, i.e. preparing Tihn Chern's speech for Teacher's Day. Yes, don't give me that awkward look of surprise. He didn't know what to talk about, so I offered to write him a simple speech. Which I did, and from there made a few changes of his own. In the end, all I did was provide him an avenue to deliver an inspiring speech (well, I felt it was) - he filled in the rest of the blanks.

That's how cooperation should be.

So you can stop hoping I'll be kind enough to give you clues. I've given far too many, and from what I've seen, they haven't helped you at all. Not a bit. Sure, you'll say it helped them answer the questions. But that's just a temporary solution. The permanent one is yours in the end.