Recently, I had to sit back and evaluate my life, some of my choices and wonder how I had gotten to a spot where I felt every kind of negative emotion a person could feel.

How did this happen?

Why did I do that?

Why do I keep doing this to myself?

Something that really just sucks about being a human is that we often make the same decisions over and over again thinking the outcome will be different.

Trust me, I am not innocent of this.

I like to believe that everyone is worth paying attention to. Sometimes I meet people I want to give more attention to. We have similar interests, they have interests different from mine but I find them intriguing, or I just really connect with them.

Regardless of which of the three they fit into, I end up giving most of my energy to them.

The truth is, I exert a lot of energy when I am around people because I’m trying to be completely invested in the conversation. There have been times I’ve actually found myself tired simply because I was interacting with someone.

Most of the time this means I’m giving 110% to someone that is totally fine with giving 25%.

I want to help people understand what it’s like to be a person that goes through that constantly.

It leaves you feeling a little dejected and downright just sad.

It happens.

It’s hard for me to understand how people can have meaningless conversations with people, especially when I remember almost every encounter I have with someone.

So, after going through something like this AGAIN, I sat down and decided that I was going to stop caring so much about people.

And that lasted about two seconds.

I thought about what my life would be like if I didn’t ask people about their day, if I didn’t ask them about their new car (even though I don’t know a thing about cars), or if I didn’t listen to the music someone liked even though it’s so far from my taste in music.

My life would have little to no purpose. If I lived my life not caring about other people, I would get bored. I would only care about myself - and I know I’m not interesting enough for that.

There’s nothing wrong with being invested in other people. Sometimes people just won’t take it all in.

And that’s a “them” problem, not a “me” problem.