I'm sick and tired........ Should I just give up?

26 real days is a lot of time to be put into a family like that.  So first of all, congrats on making it this far with them!  Secondly, I'd try to keep it going if I were you.  I'm a micromanager of my own sims, so I hear you on that.  But I've sternly told myself that I'm going to try to let my non active sims have free will more, when I play.  (Though right now there's only one sim in the household I'm playing.  So we'll see how good I hold to my own stern tasking once there's more!)