For the past couple of days, I've been away from home. This is something that rarely happens because I happen to be the kind of guy who tries his possible best not to leave home unless it is absolutely necessary, but even at that, I always make sure to return home at the end of the day.
But you see, I actually feel that if you're a young person who preferably hasn't started a family of their own and maybe works from home and doesn't get to go out much, it is very advisable for you to randomly disappear from your home occasionally for a few days, especially if you happen to live in a building like mine where everyone can be noisy and your neighbors can tell if you're at home or not.
And I say this from a place of experience because for the longest time I've always had to work from home. I've done multiple gigs, all of them from the comfort of my room, and it's a lot of fun and a privilege having to do that, but the downside of it, or what I perceived to be the downside of it, was when my neighbors started making me feel some kind of way about it.
I started receiving calls from some of my neighbors, asking me to help take in their laundry because it's about to rain; sometimes they call me and ask me to help buy food for them because they might be coming back late and might not meet the restaurant open when they do.
At first these things weren't an issue for me because these weren't just neighbors but also my friends, but then it got to a point where it started to make me feel somehow about the whole thing because I got to find out occasionally that they started not caring to take care of some things before going out, simply because they knew I would always be home to help them take care of it if it came to that.
So instead of taking their laundry into their room before going out, they decide to leave it because they know they can always call me to help take it inside for them when it starts raining. Instead of rushing back home to meet the restaurant while it's still open, they relax wherever they are because they know they can always pick up the phone and plead with me to help them buy it for them.
So what I started doing was that on some days, whenever they called to ask for a favor, I would tell them that I wasn't home and would hear the surprise and disappointment in their voice because they had thought the errand boy would always be available.
But I decided to take it a step further and just randomly started sleeping over at the homes of my other friends who live elsewhere; I figured I might as well have fun while trying to teach the guys a lesson. And yes, I know I can always say no to them when they call to ask for these favors, but I also want to correct the impression that they have of me never having a place to go.
And trust me when I say I'm loving it.
