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Oh my gosh, this is more of a vent than asking for advice, though I won't turn any down! (Well, unless it's couched in insults, but no one on C-D would do that, right? )
My youngest brother is 47, he lives out of state, and he's mentally ill. He's also intelligent and is supposedly doing the whole therapy thing - I hope he is. Anyway, he's 100 percent disabled by his mental illness. So since he doesn't work, and is on a fixed income, he has lots of spare time.
I feel for him but I am not responsible for him. I am not his guardian and will not be, because he is very difficult to try to help.
Anyway, our parents have died over the past two years, and so I have sent him a lot of family photos, many of which he's never seen. Most of these were downloaded from the originals by our dad, and I got the digital copies from him. I do have many of the originals too, but they are packed up in boxes and old photo albums with those sticky backed pages, and are difficult, if not impossible to remove. For the record, I have been the only sibling who has "safeguarded" these original photo albums. My oldest brother doesn't want the originals, and my youngest brother (the brother in question) doesn't have any kids, and I am saving these original photo albums frankly, for my kids and grandkids one day. And I'm also storing them. And I boxed them up and moved them.
For the record, my other brother and I went through many photos and divvied up a lot of them into three separate boxes, one for each sibling. He took his, and I am still holding onto this other brother's photos two years after we divvied them up.
My dad scanned and uploaded many old family photos, many of which are in Facebook albums. He also sent me many over the years, and I saved them to my computer. Occasionally I will print a few. I have also emailed a lot of these to my adult kids over the years.
OK, enough back story. So my youngest brother, out of the blue, says "Wow you have a lot of family photos. I would like copies of those." I said, "No problem, I'll email them to you." He said, "Well, I'd really prefer that you give me the originals, and then I'll scan them and print them and get the originals back to you." Come on - we all know he's not going to scan them or get them back to me. And that's a lot more trouble anyway, when my dad already doctored them up, edited them, cropped them, saved them, sent them to me and now I can send them to other relatives.
So I said, "No, I'll email them to you." He said, "But I don't ever check my email." (Not my problem.) So I said, "Well, now you will need to do so." So I went through hundreds of photos and emailed him about 30. I didn't hear anything from him for about a week, and then he texted me and said, "I couldn't open those attachments." So I said, "Sounds like you need to upgrade your device - you need to be able to open email attachments. But in the meantime, you can go to a library or a friend's house, log into your email, and download the pictures onto a flash drive and take the flash drive to Walmart and have them print your photos." (I know he can just log onto Walmart's website from any computer and download those photos and order prints but that very idea makes his head explode apparently.)
He keeps saying "Just give me the originals and I will get them back to you," and frankly, I'm not going to give him many originals WHEN IT IS NOT NECESSARY. And I think he knows that and if the truth be told, he'd rather me just print him a lot of photos and give them to him. He's like a kid - one who makes it so difficult to get them to do something that the parent says, "Just forget it, I'll do it myself."
I suspect he still won't be able to make the leap from flash drive to prints. It's not expensive to have the prints made from a lot of different websites. I would think about doing that for him, and just have the prints mailed to him.
I suspect he still won't be able to make the leap from flash drive to prints. It's not expensive to have the prints made from a lot of different websites. I would think about doing that for him, and just have the prints mailed to him.
No way, sorry.
It's enough of a hassle for me to go through thousands of photos and download them onto a flash drive and send them to him. I mean, I would do that if for some weird reason he can't manage to download them himself from his emails. But ALL HE HAS TO DO is take that flash drive into Walmart if he can't manage to download the pictures himself. No way am I going to pay for his photos and do everything for him. That's been his biggest problem his whole life anyway.
Example - he texted me a little while ago and said, "My mom has died and I can't talk to her anymore. My favorite counselor has left. I need adult supervision!" What? I said "You haven't talked to Mom or relied on her for a long time. Your favorite counselor left two years ago. You're 47 years old. Volunteer somewhere!"
My gosh. He was here for nearly two months this past fall and only went to see Mom one time. She hasn't been able to talk on the phone for nearly a year.
He keeps trying to make me take on some support role for him. I'm not going to do it.
I suspect he still won't be able to make the leap from flash drive to prints. It's not expensive to have the prints made from a lot of different websites. I would think about doing that for him, and just have the prints mailed to him.
I agree with this. Or have them printed someplace local to him (Walmart?) where he can go pick them up.
It's enough of a hassle for me to go through thousands of photos and download them onto a flash drive and send them to him. I mean, I would do that if for some weird reason he can't manage to download them himself from his emails. But ALL HE HAS TO DO is take that flash drive into Walmart if he can't manage to download the pictures himself. No way am I going to pay for his photos and do everything for him. That's been his biggest problem his whole life anyway.
Seems to me that uploading them to the Walmart site and having him pick up the prints is less work than finding a USB or DVD, loading the files, and mailing to him. And likely won't cost much more. They're $0.09 per 4x6 print on the Walmart site.
I agree with this. Or have them printed someplace local to him (Walmart?) where he can go pick them up.
Why should I organize all this and pay for it? I am really curious about the rationale behind this. He wanted the originals, ostensibly to download them and print them at WalMart (that's what he said he was going to do so he's familiar with the process). Why would I sort through all the photos, upload them to Walmart, then pay to have them printed and mailed to him? What I want to do, if he for some reason can't download the pictures from his email, which seems weird to me but OK, is enough trouble as it is - go through the photos and upload them onto a flash drive and mail it to him. Then he can do whatever he wants with them.
He's an intelligent person but he's lazy and one of the things he's always tried to do (with some success for awhile till people get sick of it) is get other people to work for him, to be involved in his projects (which really means doing his projects while he pontificates about things), to pay for his hobbies, etc. I am not inclined to enable him.
Seems to me that uploading them to the Walmart site and having him pick up the prints is less work than finding a USB or DVD, loading the files, and mailing to him. And likely won't cost much more. They're $0.09 per 4x6 print on the Walmart site.
Oh no, I have a flash drive right here. That's no problem. And it's a lot less trouble to upload photos to a flash drive and stick that in an envelope to mail from my house, than it is to upload them to Walmart, pick the size for each of them, pay for each one and then have him pick them up. That's exactly what he wants me to do by the way. Whatever is absolutely the easiest and least expensive for him. Then he can grouse about it not being enough photos and the prints being the wrong size.
Why would it be easier to upload photos to Walmart than it would be to upload them onto a flashdrive? Sorry, but I don't get that. And it's even EASIER to upload them to an email, but no, we can't do that because he can't open them with his tablet, he says.
You know what though, even if I mail him a flash drive, he will find some reason why he can't get that to work. Or he'll say he never received it. Because we are making the colossal mistake of assuming that he really wants to download these photos. He doesn't. He wants the originals and he wants me to box them up and give them to him. If he can't get those, he wants me to print pictures out and deliver them to him but that's fraught with pitfalls too because they won't be the size he prefers, or whatever.
He wants the photos and he wants them delivered to him with no effort or cost to him.
For the life of me I can't figure out why he can't just open his email and download the photos himself. But he doesn't want to do that, you have to understand that. What he WANTS is for me to give him the originals - he has no actual intention of following through, downloading them (with what? he has no scanner or anything like that), and then returning them to me.
He is exhausting. He has called me non stop, talking to me (not with me you understand - TO me) for hours and hours about his plans, what he's reading, what he's watching, his philosophical notions, yada yada yada, and he's the sort of guy that doesn't give you an out in a conversation. Plus, I felt like "Well, Mom died, and he needs to talk with someone, so I'll listen," but MY GOSH, he's wearing me out at this point. And now he's giving me instructions on how he wants me to help him - do this, do that, etc. He has even gone so far as to say, "Well, now, Kathryn, I consider you my trustee, my executor, my guardian so to speak, I mean not really but emotionally, so I am going to be relying on you for a lot of guidance and advice, I hope you realize that." But see, he doesn't REALLY want a guardian or to give me any sort of actual authority over him - he just wants me to be ready to serve him when he wants something and doesn't want to do it himself.
Now he's latched on to this photo idea and he's running with it. He has all day to think about ways he can get me to do stuff for him. I watched him do this to my parents for decades. I am not signing up for this.
Last edited by KathrynAragon; 01-21-2019 at 01:12 PM..
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