When Is The Right Time To Quit?
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From a certified quitter.
For most of my life, I’ve been a quitter.
The first sport I quit was wrestling, and quite frankly I wasn’t any good anyway. Quitting wrestling at the age of 10 was the first time in my life I realized it was okay to quit something.
I quit soccer when I got to high school. Even though I was a much better soccer player, I wanted to focus on basketball. Plus it was the much “cooler” sport. Girls in high school weren’t checking for soccer players.
I quit the band when I got into high school as well. I was nice on the saxophone, but I wanted to be at the football games chasing girls, causing trouble, and having fun rather than dressed in a band uniform marching around the field at half-time. I was “too cool” for that.
When I got to college, I got even better at quitting.
I quit my internship at the radio station because I was kicked out of the Valentine’s Day party at the Velvet Room.
I quit my duties as the manager of Georgia State men’s basketball team because I didn’t want to wash another grown man’s underwear.
I quit writing in the school newspaper for reasons unbeknownst to myself.
Let’s not even talk about dating and romantic relationships…
I wanted to end all of my relationships before they would end it with me. At the first sign of just an ounce of adversity, I was quick to let my temporary mate know that I thought it would be best if we ended our affair.
Not wanting to lead someone on was always the excused I used to get out of a relationship, but the truth was I had no sense of what it meant to persevere through anything.
And most of all, I was scared of what not quitting would look like.
There is no shame in quitting in itself. Sometimes it’s necessary to quit. However it is the way in which we quit that determines if we quit prematurely or not.
I quit most things because I lacked mental or emotional maturity. My sense of what it meant to work for something was seriously skewed. I treated life like…
