Lazy author’s note: One of the effects of membership in this site is that I have written down a lot of things that I otherwise would not have. Many of these thoughts remain in editing limbo. The intent is to post my great wisdom and reap the internet points, but a side effect is that I have accidentally created a bit of journal that I have never before managed to convince myself to write. I wrote this back in the spring of 2018. I decided not to change much. There are no conclusions here, just thoughts. I’ve added a few notes in bold italics for updates and clarity. And because I like bold italics.

I joined Ricochet after I had been visiting the site for several years. The reason I had not joined earlier was that I had nothing to say. If I had a question or comment on a post, somebody else had already voiced it. All I had to do was scroll through the comments and wait and somebody did the work for me.

I’ve had this post idea floating around in my head for quite a long time and, as usual, somebody beat me to it.  (2.5 years later…)

But, I decided, in light of the topic of Quitting, that I would get around to finishing my version anyway. Irony, or something. Also mine is more rambling and incoherent so it’s different.

Here is my theme song:

(I gave up)

The point of the episode this song is from is that Candace should not give up. Keep Trying to the End! But Candace’s seeming purpose in the series is to illustrate the futility of fighting the wrong fight.* At the end of this episode she is back to fighting and failing again and again.

So the question is: How do you tell when to quit?

Fine! Questions.

What is the difference between quitting before you succeed and quitting after you fail? 

How do you tell what are the signs of failure that indicate when you should quit?

Throw in the towel?

Chicken out?

Try a different tack?

Kick the bucket?

Give up the ghost?

Find new idioms?**

I’ve had to quit four jobs. The first jobs I had were summer jobs so they don’t count. The rest all had some pretty obvious tells that it was time to quit. Such as the horrible rash that covered my arms up the elbows, getting married and moving, or having another baby. Those were relatively easy, even though they were pretty big life choices.

The decision to not have more kids was harder and I still struggle with that. Is that a quitting, though? I think that falls into a different category. (Yeah, I totally had another baby. I even fail at quitting.)

It’s apparently easy to look back at things you’ve been successful at and say “I’m glad I didn’t quit!” My sister failed at her first attempt at getting through Nursing school. The second time, trying at a different school in a different area, she succeeded. It’s easy to say it was worth it on the other end.

(As a side note I had to quit working on this because I had to feed my kids. I suppose that could be considered a pause because I obviously came back to it, and then an untruncated pause would be a quit.) (Better late than never?)

I started writing a book many years ago and when I got writer’s block, I quit. I tell myself I could go back to it at any time, but after 13 years, I know I’m kidding myself.  (And it’s now been 15.)

I had a great idea for a crocheted creature. I couldn’t find a pattern so I had to make one up. I worked on it for about six months before I really came to the realization that I failed and it was time to let go.  (The list of unfinished crochet projects groes ever longer.)

Did I fail because I quit or quit because I failed?

I have a couple stocks that I bought around 10 years ago. One of them was about $3.50 per share when I bought it and it went all the way up to $5.50 before it plunged precipitously down to nothing when it was discovered that the CEO was embezzling. It’s now worth less than a small fraction of a penny per share, but I still have it. The other stock I bought went from $5 to $65 and has been floating around at ~$50. I still have that one too. I don’t know what to do with stocks.

There are some things in life that simply cannot be quit. Or rather, you can but the consequences of outright quitting are really bad. You can’t quit parenting without getting rid of your kids and the methods of doing that should land one in jail, with good reason. But many people just fail. Without actually quitting.

I know a number of people with foster kids whose parents are either actively failing or finally gave up. At what point should they have given up? What does that look like? (Update on three of those kids: two have been adopted. The biological father of the third just died of brain cancer a few weeks ago and it became apparent that before his death he had set up a bunch more roadblocks against the safety of his kid as several related but previously disinterested people have now laid a claim on the kid, prolonging the court battles yet again.)

As a background person, it took me a long time to figure out how to interact on Ricochet. I was getting cautiously comfortable with commenting on Ricochet last year to the point that I actually wrote a few posts and commented fairly frequently. Then one day I made a negative comment on a truly reprehensible post, and was told that my opinion was wrong and not valid because I disagreed with the poster’s point.

Which made me wonder if I had agreed with the OP, would I then have been allowed to point out that his post was raving drivel? 

This would not have mattered as much had the mods not agreed with him. I guess I’m not one of the special ones.

So I pondered quitting Ricochet. My yearly renewal was coming up so it would have been easy to just not renew. I spent way too long thinking about this as it really has very little impact on my life, but I had started the 90-day challenge and I thought that was worth keeping up on.

So instead of quitting, I just stepped back into the background, where I belong.

(Still here, apparently.)

Like most people, I have trouble keeping up with exercise. My one sister somehow exercises more than all her six siblings combined. It takes me months to get up to a point of consistency and two days of a cold to destroy all that work. I fail consistently and keep trying anyway because there really is no other option. I need to be able to do things, so some minimum of physical activity is required to maintain proper function. I did quit trying to run. Maybe I’ll try again someday, but I find that I limit my failure with regard to exercise by doing things that I at least have a chance of success with. That’s not exactly reaching for the stars but I’ll fail at that too, thanks. I did fail at the 90-day challenge, btw.

Homeschooling has come up a lot recently. I was homeschooled and I loved it and thrived. As the teacher, I hate it and fail. I have persisted at this failure because of my memories, my family’s insistence, the news, and the fact that the schools in my city are epic failures that nearly rival my own teaching failures.

(After writing this I took a year off from homeschooling because I was too tired of hating my kids. It was convenient that #6 was coming because it was an easy lie to blame it on a new baby when people asked. In 2019, I sent two to public school and ineffectively taught two at home. The school then took that as a challenge to see who could be the worst. At this point I could just quit actively teaching anything to my kids at all and I would still be doing better than the local schools.)

My mother-in-law (successful homeschooler of seven) insists that continuing to fail will magically result in success. Eventually. After all, if you fail to potty train your two-year-old, you can always train them at three. Or four, if necessary. I think that misses the point. The time lost banging my head against the wall and dreading every second of every school day has to count somewhere. But I’m too selfish, I suppose.

If quitting is failure and continuing is failure, can’t I pick the one that causes us the least damage? At least then I would have some time to get a job so we could try to pay for a better education.

“Attitude is everything!” some asinine inspirational poster declares.¹ “When you can’t change your circumstances, change your attitude!” Thanks for that, let me know how that goes next time you are drowning…

There’s no set point I can point to to show how bad I’m failing at teaching, it’s just been a gradual realization that the water is starting to boil and I can’t get out.

But I still don’t know when to quit.

(Yes, I’m homeschooling four now. It is almost a relief that there is currently no alternative, but it’s not really going well.)

Also in the news lately has been Physician-assisted suicide. This is quitting in the ultimate way. I have never been suicidal, but when I look at what has happened to my Dad, I cannot help but think about it. Not that I wish him dead, but that, should I be put in a similar situation, I don’t want to do to my family what he has done to his.

Speaking of which: Marriage. ‘Til death do us part. My parents were happily married for 30 something years. The rest of their marriage has been hell. Dad was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s at 49 and while that’s not an immediate death sentence, it would have been nice if he had been allowed to end his life as a great father, husband, employee, etc.

It’s difficult to pinpoint when he started going crazy. It came on so subtly and unbelievably that we were for a long time unable to grasp that he no longer had a grip on reality. My mother held on as best she could. She believed in her marriage, in their love and the “in sickness and health” part. She really tried. But my Dad became so abusive that it was driving her to suicide. My two sisters still living at home hated high school, but it was the only refuge they had to save them from Dad.

When my mother finally left him, it was only after much damage and great anguish. If she had left sooner would she and the girls have been spared that? Or had it just reached the necessary point where she was finally sure she had to quit? Reasonably it should take a lot before we abandon our commitments.

Where is the line?

(The final line in this instance is the loving hand of the government, which has forced my Mother to get a divorce to protect herself from them taking all of her assets to pay for Dad’s care. Before that my mother had settled on a legal separation.)

And it’s not my Dad’s fault he went crazy, though he has steadfastly refused to accept help in dealing with it, the Parkinson’s and associated psychosis was just bad luck. (My sister the nurse finally managed, in working with Dad’s guardian, to get him into a facility that controls his medication. So while he could technically walk out at any time, they hold his medication hostage, which forces him to behave, and prevents him from overdosing which also helps him behave. It sounds cruel, but it’s the least cruel thing that has happened to him in a long time. Mental illness has no silver lining.) So I can see why people like the idea of sparing their loved ones possible misery by cutting short the time in which such misery could occur. But really, if that’s even a part of the argument, why do we live at all?

I don’t know how to end this² so here is another song.

(livin’ in a funhouse)

*And she’s funny.

** Hmm, two of those are euphemisms for death…

¹ I saw a poster with the Great Wall of China underneath which was the amazing claim “Teamwork: Many Hands, Many Minds, One Goal.” I mean, technically true?

² Ha Ha.