Do It Yourself

In the end, my washing machine was fixed, and it was free. But once again, I found myself having to get it taken care of myself. Yes, the sales guy at Home Depot was trying to help but ultimately he was useless. He called GE a few times, and said they would take care of me, but he never bothered to either give me the extension of a GE customer service rep or a case number. All he could give me was a name. So in the end, after calling GE multiple times, I finally just said "Screw this" and pleaded my case to the next representative I got. She agreed to help me and we had a service guy out on Thursday and he fixed the washer for free. So Linzy, call rep from GE, thanks for helping me out!

I've known for quite sometime, that my inability to ask for help is one of my bigger character flaws. I recently confessed to a friend of mine how I find it hard to have faith in other people. I think that might be part of why I find myself drawn to friendships with people with strong religious convictions. A small part of me likes to think they are more honest or trust worthy. Sadly, even that is a form of profiling.

The overarching problem is that my pessimistic personality spills over into my view of what might motivate other people. I operate under this assumption that most people only either care about themselves, only do things motivated in self interest, and if push came to shove, will always look out for their own self interests first.

A lot of my decisions are based on the assumption that I have no one to rely on but myself. It's sorta like social security. In my mind, it doesn't even exist. I assume that when I retire, the only money I'll have to pay for the rest of my life will be the money that I earned and saved. That might be an extreme example, but it illustrates my point.

The reason I consider this such a character flaw, is not so much the "no one would ever help me if I needed it" attitude that I have, but more so, the indirect side effect of not being able to rely on other people. It also means it's very hard to look to others for help in other areas such as emotional or yes, maybe even spiritual support. (and before you get too excited, I'm refering more to the "values and meanings by which people live" type of spirituality, not religion per-say)

I also assume that eventually I'm going to have to ask for help. At some point in my life, I'll need support of one kind or another. And maybe by then I'll get past my inability to rely on others for good. In the meantime, I'll keep hanging up on random people that call my house because I just assume they want something from me. I'm sure someday I'll hang up on someone calling to tell me I just won a million dollars.