On Quitting

Quitting is such an ugly word that I have many times vowed to (I dare not say a certain word here) stop using it. However, quitting is something that I do all of the time. I do it so often in fact that I consider myself quite good at it. I quit writing a review. I quit reading a book. I quit eating a meal. I quit quitting, etcetera. These tiny aborted attempts have begun racking up considerably and I think that it is necessary to air a little bit of them out.

Most notably of my recent failures has been an essay about “quitting” a book. In my beautifully worded piece (I may post it later once I have weeded out some of the grammatical issues) I explained that “quitting” a book is really not something to be ashamed of, it is something to embrace. We should be free to read what we want and not be bothered to finish a book that is for some reason particularly difficult. We can always return to the novel at a later date when we are better prepared. There is no point in beating one’s head against a literary wall in some vain attempt at proving one’s intellectual might. There is no expiration date on fine literature.

Why I stopped this piece mid-stream I do not know. Did I let it sit too long between first draft and revisions? Did I make the mistake of showing it to someone too early? Or did I write at the wrong time of the day (writing in the middle of the night is still foreign territory to me)? These questions really do not concern me though. What concerns me is the simple fact that I have been quitting so many things lately. Even worse, I propose (mentally) to quit certain things to alleviate any discomfort. I cannot count the number of times I have quit my job this week alone. I wanted to quit a difficult conversation with a doctor. I even wanted to quit on a bowl of cereal because it had gotten soggy. These are not ventures that I actually end up quitting, only moments of displeasure when my mind jumps to quitting. And it is this fact that upsets me so much, the fact my mind rushes to ending without completion.

The answer to this still eludes me. Self-reflection in the form of blogging has failed to really yield any results. Maybe the key may lie in my old mantra of mental health “What if I’m blowing this out of proportion and am not really that crazy”. Perhaps this is something everyone else does and I simply don’t know about it. It could be some widespread, yet unspoken of condition. Even if I am completely wrong in this theory at least now I have a new skill, quitting.