GIVING UP, BUT NOT A QUITTER?

Giving up is different than quitting. Really.

Quitting means done, all over, finished. The Day I Quit.

Giving up is a longer process.

One is a reaction, the other a journey.

Who’s got the map?

I quit a bad job one day and started a new one that night.

“You need to give two weeks notice.”

I didn’t.

It didn’t affect anyone that I’d quit, like it didn’t affect anyone any time I quit.

If you’re a quitter, don’t make it about anything but you. And be polite.

Sure I quit the job quickly, but that’s how it broke down.

I had a meeting. They explained their side while I listened.

My side? It sounded like a ‘getting fired’ moment so I saved them the trouble.

The second time I sat across the desk from an ugly, sniffing, gasping jackass stating the conditions of my continued employment.

I had to choose between a buyout package, or a hostile environment, though that’s not how they put it on the table.

So I went home, talked to the wife, and took the buyout instead of threats to make my life miserable.

Would it have been as miserable as the moist hunk of humanity across from me? Probably, and he was miserable.

So I might be perceived as a quitter? Yes, but I wasn’t giving up.

 

The Difference Between Giving Up And Quitting

Quitting has the feel of finality, of never returning, of never going back and forgetting all about it.

As a writer writing a blog every day, quitting is always an option. It’s the best part of the fight to get anything done.

If I don’t do it, no one will do it, which is unlike any job.

If I had any good sense I’d quit and move on to the next thing, except this is the ‘next thing.’

This is my first huge blog.

I quit it for boomerpdx, which, if you follow, has also become a huge blog.

Huge in the number of posts I’ve produced in both places.

I scrolled DG’s B&B for fifty strokes across my pad and it kept loading blog post after blog post after blog post.

Just went back for twenty more and it’s still not the end.

I didn’t give up scrolling and found the end. This is the beginning of the first post from May 6, 2009:

 

Welcome to DeeGees B & B.  Good food and conversation.  Modern facilities.  Theme rooms. 

You can check in anytime you want and leave when it feels right.   

Here at the B & B we don’t ask personal questions, but we want to make sure we get you in the right space to relax.  Sometimes it doesn’t work out.

The couple in the Learning Room argue for social priority, money for bridges or schools.

Three men in the History Suite pitch each other fund raising ideas for their museum.

The woman in the Wellness Penthouse chastises herself for being a bad caregiver.

 The other rooms are quiet for now.

 A woman’s voice from the Learning Room, “Who do you think builds bridges?  It’s not the mechanical engineer changing your oil.”

 Man’s voice, “Is it the green engineer who does your hair?”

Woman, “My hair?  You’ve never mentioned my hair.”

 

I may set the record for most blog posts read by fewest readers, but I’m glad you’re reading.

One of my recent readers didn’t know to click the highlighted words, the link to related things I think you’ll finds interesting, so give them a click.

Another asked about the platform I’m on: WordPress and Bluehost.

Yet another asked about my process: Find a title for an idea, find a place to put it, and find people and feelings to explain it.

Boom, it’s that easy. Could are a movie? What about that hair?

 

When Giving Up Works Best

I remember arguing with my dad about things after my parents got divorced.

We’d talk, I’d talk, he’d talk, and I’d eventually ask a yes or no question.

And he kept going with maybe, which got me exercised.

“Maybe, I suppose, we’ll see, I think so,” were all in his arsenal against a definite answer, and I didn’t get it.

I do now, now I get it. It’s only taken what, thirty-some years?

We don’t live in a definite world where everything holds together the way we’d like it.

There’s always something ready to knock us off balance, maybe start us on another journey.

When I learned cancer had taken a space in my campground I figured I was a dead man walking. Who doesn’t?

I’d put up a brave front, then bad news to worse news, a nice memorial, and my wife would remarry.

I already hate the guy.

But it didn’t work out that way and here I am.

I started with an attitude familiar to chemo-lounge nurses.

I don’t belong here and I hate the fuck out of it.

On the first day a lady got out of her lounge chair, put on her coat, and told the staff in a nasty voice on the way out, “I hated being here and I hope I never see any of you ever again.”

In my mind: The fuck are you talking about, I just got here.

I asked a nurse what that was all about and she said some people never accept that they even have cancer.

She also said that wasn’t a very therapeutic way of doing things.

“What the best way forward for me. I kind of feel like that lady.”

Nurse: You need to give up and give in to the treatment.

Me: Your saying giving up is therapeutic?

Nurse: I find it healing. Give up the fear, the control; give up the doubt, reject the doubters; put your faith in the hands of people who will help get you through this time.

 

If you don’t put your faith in your partner, you may have the wrong partner.

Do you have people you call ‘My People?’ Do you have faith in each other? I do.

Talk to someone about it.

Maybe take a walk.

In their shoes.

 

I’m out.