"You are the average of the people you surround yourself with."

This is worrying.

I don't spend much time with people (I even have trouble keeping up with messages...) but when I do? I spend it with my girlfriend, my workplace, my family.

My girl is my guiding light. She's soft, sweet, wonderful and so beautiful. She fixed me. Each and every day she encourages me to be a better person. She treats me so well, I've never been treated with this much grace and patience before. It makes me feel like a bad person sometimes. She's more patient with me than I am with her.

I worry that my tantrums, frustrations and impatience causes her stress and anxiety. Because I worry, I try to be better. And I have. I've done and accomplished a lot for myself and for her. She is perfect for me. I don't know what I've done to deserve her...

My girlfriend is the one connection I worry about the least. She may not be rich, but she pushes me to be the best version of myself, always.

On the other hand, there's my work place.

At work I hop between two offices, the one at the factory is a naturally low income blue collar environment, and the other is the one that the big bosses hang out at.

They're both lonely environments, with max headcounts of four.

The factory only has mandarin speakers, all of the workers are from China or primarily speaks mandarin. I'm the only person under the age of 50 in the other office.

The factory is... Well, I don't have the same goals in life as they do. I kind of fit the rat race, actually. The factory here is great, they work hard and play hard. But I want to do meaningful work and climb up. There is no upward momentum in a factory of four workers and an admin.

Nor is there any upward momentum in the other office of 2 bosses and 2 admins. They kind of tear me down actually, with the way they speak downwards at me. I'm just a lackey to both of these places.

And then, there's my family.

They're a dysfunctional bunch. My siblings and I were raised in a middle class environment. Technically, my parents could have raised us middle-upper, but they decided to have so many children that they stretched themselves thin.

Despite having so many children, my parents helicopter parented us. For whatever insane reason my father had so much anxiety about our safety and his need for control. Ah, my dear emotionally immature parents.

And so, I have a family that's constantly in one crisis after another. Actually, ever since I got a job, the frequency shot up dramatically. But it could also be that when I was a NEET, I could afford drinking enough to ignore all of them. Come to think, in the past I never bothered with my family's affairs, I kept to myself and avoided interacting as much as possible. I only started talking to them more after I became more functional.

None of my siblings are employed except for me. Well, I guess my brother is technically self-employed as a real estate agent, he's struggling to go outside though. I hear him through the walls playing video games till 3+ am. My younger sister is self-employed too, but she's not really making any meaningful amount of money. I think she's been mooching off her boyfriend (who has been living in our home rent free for months now? He only started paying a share for the utility bills last month). My oldest sister is just flat out unemployed with severe depression.

It's a little darkly humorous that the situation has flipped. They all used to be in school or working when I was NEET'ing it out. But the strain of 3 unemployed mid-20-somethings have been weighing much harder on my parents.

I see.

It think it's possible that my job anxieties come from my present home life. Everyone is kind of flailing about so it makes me feel like succeeding is a super difficult or impossible thing, simply because that kind of behaviour is not modelled around me at all.

I need to interact with them less. Their dramas have been dragging me down.