Finding Service

Recently, me and Daddy have been talking about the services I give to him.

With Sister now being around our house more often, she's started to take over the cleaning of the house. This is leading to a few awkward issues, because part of my service to Daddy is taking care of the basic chores, such as putting the dishes in the dishwasher, and doing the laundry.

But, as has been a constant issue, I'm not good at doing these things unprompted. I'm so often not present, away in my head playing video games, or in one of my other hobbies, that I don't tend to get around to doing these chores until I'm asked. Sister is not the same - she's engaged in service for most of her attention, so she  sees something that needs to be done and does it straight away. Whereas in my case, service tends to happen when Daddy breaks me out of my attention, and points out those chores to me.

This often means that my chores are done long before I'd normally do them at the end of the night. Not an ideal situation.

But this is something that we've been dealing with for years. It's always been the case that I don't do things unless prompted (sometimes prompted several times), and I can't compete in service against someone who has the presence of mind to do things without asking.

Daddy has been talking about perhaps moving my chores to Sister instead, and to be honest that makes me a little anxious. When he mentioned it to me previously I reacted almost violently to it. The reason, really, is that I also want service in my life. Those little chores I do, even though they're not much, are as much about me serving Daddy.

And yes, there's plenty of other services I do. The fact that I work, in a job that earns a lot of money, is just one of those services, but it doesn't feel like service to me. I'd be doing it regardless of whether it benefited Daddy. And as a result of that feeling, I don't tend to feel like I'm in service to Daddy unless it's something I do for him at home.

Now that I've had some time to think about it, though, there are other things that I can do that help Daddy, perhaps even more than chores. Things like going out and doing food shopping, things like chauffeuring Daddy to events, like cleaning his car... The big things that I do for him that aren't exactly regular, but are there when Daddy needs them. The things that me being an able-bodied person means I'm able to do for him, saving him the energy to do things that he wants and needs to do more.

I think it's clear that I have to play to my strengths here. I'm just not going to be the sort of service sub that can be set up and left to their own devices. I think instead, I need to focus on being the sort of service sub that is able to get up and do things when instructed. I can do that, I've done that before. It means that I'm the go-to person when things need to be done now, rather than the person in the background that gets things done without thinking. The concierge, rather than the dogsbody, if that makes sense.

Perhaps that's a better way of distributing the service duties in a fair manner. As long as there's things that do need doing right now, and they happen frequently enough, I think I could be satisfied with that sort of arrangement. What I want is the feeling that I'm serving Daddy, and I want to do things often enough that I don't feel like I'm abandoning Daddy. I think I can go back to Daddy on this.