Day 244: how to guest

personal

things that are nice to do when you stay with people:

  • take out the trash

  • wash dishes

  • empty dishwasher

  • vacuum and clean their apartment

  • basically any chore that they don’t enjoy doing

  • buy them groceries / snacks

  • help them do something that they’ve been putting off

    • i helped my friend perform a light installation that he’d been planning to do for several weeks but could never muster the motivation to do. took like 20 minutes and he was super grateful that i offered to help

typically, people try to discourage you from doing their chores out of politeness, so i generally tend to just help out without asking for permission first and if they object, tell them that i enjoy being able to give back in these little ways which is true

things i’d like to do more as a guest:

  • cook them dope meals
  • fix broken things
  • run a lil workshop and help them with something significant (e.g. personal finance, mock interview / resume review, programming stuff)

while i’m glad that this now comes pretty naturally to me and plan to keep doing it, i do think some of this probably stems from discomfort in being dependent by simply receiving kindness without paying it back in some way. want to learn how to give freely and receive freely too