Tag Archives: essays

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love My Inner Quitter

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It’s a well-known fact here in America that if you’re a quitter, then you are essentially the worst kind of human being. You’re worse than people who kick puppies and the hosts of reality television shows. You’re worse than anything, because Americans don’t know what the word “quit” means. (I blame funding cuts in the public education system. Stay in school, kids!) Being a quitter is worse than just plain failing at something, because quitting is a character flaw. It makes you essentially a weaker person.

Or at least, that’s the impression I get from my own psyche, which sees fit to torture me with horrible feelings of inadequacy and abject misery every time I quit at something. Which really, let’s face it, is a pretty frequent event. I like to try everything. So quitting kind of comes with the territory.

Recently I tried to learn to play the guitar. Playing a musical instrument or otherwise being musically talented has been a lifelong dream for me, primarily because I am the most musically ignorant person who ever lived. (Well, maybe not as musically ignorant as half the people who audition for American Idol. Seriously, can they not hear themselves?) The two things I most ardently wish I’d been exposed to as a child are music and languages, and they’re two things that I think are much tougher to learn later in life, at least for me. But I was determined. I was inspired (by Glen Hansard, who is a musical genius). I was going to do this thing. Like a boss.

My last roommate knew a little guitar, taught me some chords and let me borrow her guitar. It was fun, but I didn’t practice as much as I should have, and I was frustrated by my inability to produce any sound which could be described as “melodic.” Or “bearable.”

When I moved I thought I’d have to give it up, but my co-worker Brett used to be a touring musician, and he was kind enough to lend me one of his guitars so I could keep practicing. He gave me a little tutorial, and I took a lesson at a music shop in town. And I discovered something important about myself: I don’t understand music. I don’t understand the hows or whys of it, the structure, the terminology… any of it. And I probably will never understand it, because just trying worked me up into such a state of emotional turmoil that my mind would try to just turn itself off. (The reasons for this are legion, but mostly I think they trace back to the junior high school music teacher who turned my enthusiasm for music into a general sense of terror and made me feel like the most worthless human being alive. Thanks, Mr. Jones. You tosser.)

Eventually I reached a point where music brought more stress than happiness, and I just couldn’t justify it to myself. I returned Brett’s guitar. I didn’t schedule another lesson at the music shop. I gave up.

The thing is, there are plenty of good reasons to give up on something, and particularly as you get older, you begin to understand the value of focusing on a few things rather than trying to master all of them. Could I have learned to competently play the guitar, if I’d applied myself and kept practicing? Probably. But I had to weigh all that time — and it would’ve taken a lot of time — learning the guitar against spending that time on something else I’m passionate about. Did I want to be inside inexpertly plucking at chords, or did I want to be outside working with my horse? Did I want to make a commitment to getting up early every morning and practicing guitar for an hour, or did I want to make a commitment to getting up early every morning and working out for hour? (Or did I want to face the reality that my life and “early” aren’t really concepts that work well together?) Did I want to spend my time becoming a mediocre musician, or did I want to spend my time becoming a fantastic writer?

Put in those terms, it doesn’t seem quite so much like I quit playing the guitar as I chose to focus on other things in my life. Lately I’ve gone a bit mad with setting goals, and the more goals I set the more I realize I just can’t reach them all…. and if I don’t narrow my focus to the ones that are truly important to me, I can’t reach any of them.

(Recently while talking to a friend, I asked her whether a five-year plan that I have in mind is truly feasible. She said sure, if it’s the only project I’m working on. I could only answer with a pregnant pause, before admitting that I’m also working on a daily art project, a 101 in 1001 project, a personal fitness project, several novels, and probably a few other projects I’ve already forgotten about. When I started setting goals for myself, I just went nuts with it.)

One of the things I realize about myself is that I have a tendency to take on too much at once — as the list above will demonstrate. I end up missing all deadlines, fumbling all balls, and getting absolutely nothing done. (Recently I lost work — unpaid volunteer design work, mind you — to the local print shop I had referred the client to for shirt pricing. Well done, me.) Previously I simply accepted this as the way my life is, but now I’m working to get things in order, looking for ways to get myself organized, and actively holding myself back from overcommitting. (Er, that last is a work in progress.)

There are things you can change. There are projects you should keep plugging away at, no matter how difficult they are. And there are times when you have to decide which things are worth all that effort and which ones aren’t. Sometimes quitting is the best thing you can do, so don’t be afraid to quit. Be afraid of never trying at all.

I traced my finger along your trails

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This is why I run:

It’s still daylight — I got off work on time for once, and the latest crushing deadline is at last behind me — but in the park under the sequoia canopy it’s almost cold. Running is required just to keep my toes warm, and Trudeau won’t stand for anything less than a jog, so we trot down the paved road, then off onto a side trail, and then onto another trail and another. I haven’t run so long and tirelessly since I was a child, and I can’t stop running. The trails are that particular vibrant earthy red that cradles old-growth trees, and a bed of fallen pine needles makes a surprisingly comfortable cushion underfoot. Trudeau splashes into a clear-running stream and gulps down water, and then splashes out again, his tongue lolling; he leaps, twists, grabs the leash in his teeth and tries to tow me along, to keep inertia from slowing our dash through the woods. We scramble up slopes like mountain goats, bound over fallen logs, clatter over bridges and back onto the thoroughfare again, looking for the next side trail to conquer. I’m warm, and I’m not tired, and I feel for the first time like I can run all day and never stop, so when we find ourselves at the park entrance, we turn around and plunge back into the trees, splash in the fountain, dig in our toes, run like some part of us has already flung itself ahead, and there is nothing else for us to do but set off in joyous pursuit of our own happiness.

This is why I run:

The road is suggested more than real, delineated only by the moonlight that pools pale and shimmering in the gutters. I know the route by memory anyway, and I claim the center of the road, because there is hardly ever traffic to yield to. There are lights on in the windows of the houses we pass by, but no sign of the people inside, and it is as if we are the only ones left in the world. I breathe easy for the first time all day.

The air is cool and tastes like rain, though none has fallen since yesterday. I’ve never appreciated air before the way I do now, but that’s just because I’ve never been quite so desperate for it: I’m pushing myself, maybe a little too hard, but there’s little place in my world for a stroll anymore, when a run will get me there just as well. I won’t be sore tomorrow, and I feel as if there are only empty spaces now where my limitations used to be; the only trouble with this road, these days, is that it isn’t long enough to satisfy us. Trudeau’s tags jangle and his LED collar blinks, but he’s still just a vague shape in the dark: long legs and swaying tail and rhythmically bobbing ears. Mostly he’s content just to trot along; he knows the route as well as I do, but there’s nothing boring about it. While this road is nothing terribly special by daylight, it’s a whole other beast at night.

The wetlands are picturesque pools of silver water, and they come complete with their own soundtrack: the chorus of frogs is deafeningly loud, and it drowns out the music piping through my headphones. Nothing can make them stop singing, not even the vague shape of a bird drifting overhead, the clacking of Trudeau’s claws or the slap of my feet on the pavement. There’s a pasture further up the road with its own little pond, and a group of ducks mutter a harmony to the frog song; they don’t stir the first time Trudeau and I pass by, but on the return trip, they grow uneasy and take explosive flight. They do that every night, but Trudeau never seems to realize they’ll come back again; he watches them go like he’s just lost something, though whether he’s mourning the loss of potential friends or potential meals, I can never say. I comfort him with an excursion up a side road, where a shape in the dark always leaves him transfixed and fascinated; it could be a horse, but we choose to believe it’s something more exotic, the pale shadow of a rare rhinoceros or a graceful oryx. Trudeau whines and yowls, and I have to drag him away before he really embarrasses himself. We run back down the hill again, walk a little while, then get impatient and run the rest of the way back to the main road, around the corner, on past the wetlands and away until the frog song grows fainter and finally disappears.

Trudeau runs like he’s never forgotten how: years and obligations and disappointments and a lack of time have never stood between him and his boundless joy for the outdoors, for running, for being what he’s made to be. He’s the only reason I know these routes, these places, these moments that otherwise would have been lost to me, along with my childish enthusiasm and my remembrance of running barefoot on summer-warm earth. I might have let my happiness just hurtle away, watching it outstrip me each year until I forgot that it was there to be caught. I might have done that, except that Trudeau has a talent for chasing things, and he’s a willing teacher.

This is why I run.