Why am I so tired of fixing everyone's broken things?
You can fix almost anything with a circuit in it, so people bring you their broken phones, laptops, routers — and you fix them, because you can, and because saying no feels small and unkind. This has gone on for years. The requests never stopped coming, because you never gave them a reason to stop. Notice what is actually worn down. It is not your competence. It is your patience, because you set no terms for its use. You let people believe your time was free and unlimited, and they believed it, because you never said otherwise. That is not their fault alone. The fix is not to stop helping, and it is not to grow cold. It is to decide, plainly, what helping costs now — in time, in money, in who gets it at all — and to say that decision out loud, once, without apologizing for having one.
You are not tired of fixing things. You are tired of giving your time with no terms attached. The skill was never the burden — the absence of a rule was. Decide now what you give, to whom, and for what. Say it once, plainly, and hold to it.
What changes unlock by starting
- You stop resenting the people you love for asking.
- Your evenings and weekends become mostly your own again.
- People start asking less, and more honestly, because the terms are clear.
- You find out what your time is actually worth to you.