The Leader

Seriously, nobody will ever write anything on here until I start. So here I am, as you can already tell, The Leader. In the group, I play many roles: decision maker, mediator, problem solver, and of course, the person to blame when things don’t go as planned. I’m not trying to brag, but my role is so important that the group might not even exist without me.

Why? Well, because without the person who decides when to hang out, where to meet up and what to do, everyone just stays in. That person happens to be me! I know my friends are either too lazy to use their brains or too timid to take the blame when plans go wacky. I sacrifice myself, I guess.

I do, sometimes, wonder why me!
I’m not the oldest in the group. I’m not the smartest, either.  And I have as much experience as anyone else in the group does. However, strangely enough, the group seems to be very confident of whatever I decide. I never force them to follow me but they do it naturally. They voluntarily give me the authority. If I say it’s not fun then it’s not fun. If I say we should do it, everybody will do it. At first, I didn’t know that my “Yes” and “No” are that powerful. I was just simply telling people what I liked to do and what I didn’t, but, eventually, I became the decision maker, the leader, as you can see. The truth is, whether I like that bar or not, if the rest of the group want to go, I will go with them anyway. I still need someone to hang out with.

Behind my back, I know people complain that they don’t get to do what they want because of me. Especially, I feel very sorry for The Planner (you will meet him in the next post). He comes up with plan for the group but if I say “No” , he has to come up with something else. Well, not my fault! I didn’t run for this position. And I don’t remember getting voted to be one.

The pressure is real! I can't deny that I enjoy being the Very Important Person but I’m always worried whether or not I pick the right restaurant or the right bar. “Will it be fun?”, I always second-guess myself.

And that’s not even the hardest part of being The Leader. Wait until there is a fight in the group; This person is mad at that person. Again, I’m not majoring in Counseling; I don’t go to Laws school; I don’t have a clue about mediation. However, when there is a conflict, I, somehow, get caught in the middle trying to figure out who is right, who is wrong and to make everybody happy. Let just say that it often doesn’t go very well.

Ugh!