Whoa, this is a question I have struggled with my entire life. I’m definitely in the “Quitting is underrated” camp, but you’re right about figuring out why we’re doing it…Ah, mindfulness. Practice, practice :) Thank you my dear!

@Susan – Thanks for confirming that you’ve seen that happen elsewhere (and therefore I’m not alone). Dropping guilt is so important. It’s an on-going process for me right now. It comes up, I work through it. Rinse and repeat. But the times between it coming up are getting longer.

Some apologized, some ignore the posts, guilt all around with quitting. But…they have since come back to different chapters, or dropped the book all together…really, makes no difference. We take what we need, give when we need…it comes around…stops, comes back in different ways…

I think I am about dropping the guilt now…thanks for your post.
Susan

But then I realized: There will be harm to me.

I knew that the reason I wasn’t picking up my journal was because I was scared of it. Scared to be made a fool of (ask someone to wreck it? TAKE IT FOR A WALK?!?!?!), scared of being bored, scared of tapping into my creativity & having to own it, scared of tapping into my creativity & having it be ugly & sucky.

I really like your questions – they bring all of my reasoning home for me. And even though the deadline will be up next week & I won’t be done until, oh, September, I’m gonna keep wrecking for me. And I think that’s the difference. If you’re not doing it for you…that’s when it’s time to quit.

Maybe you find it a bad thing to quit not only because quitting has a bad rep in your mind, but because it also has a bad rep in our culture and you are worried that those around you will think badly of you for quitting. (They probably wouldn’t, but sometimes we get paranoid like that anyway.)

I know what you mean. I start a lot of projects and leave them behind. I do this with books, art projects, decorating, neatness (oh, if you could see my work area! …let’s keep it so you don’t…) and more. And I don’t feel too bad about it. It bothers me slightly. I sort of hide it from others. I think if I told my friends, “You know how I started to X? Yeah, I gave that up. Whatever,” I would feel guilty. And it would be because I would be afraid they would associate my quitting with loser-ness and other bad things and then associate them to ME! (Did you notice all those “would”s? Terrible.) So, there you have one of my secrets. (Shh!)

Let’s see – what is the worst thing that could happen if you quit this project? It might help to answer that question.

And apart from that, I think it would be sweet to employ the Havi-esque “giving yourself permission” tactic to do what you feel most comfortable doing. So give yourself permission to not work on that book – until you feel like it again, which may or may not happen. And work on whatever you like instead, whatever you have more fun doing. Screw activities that go stale.

Yay fun!

You’re bringing up lots of great questions around quitting, completion, motivation, energy, self-trust, expectations. Wow, there’s so much in there. Thank you for sharing all this richness.

And just as it’s never too late to join The Next Chapter, it’s never to early to quit. Whatever you decide is perfect. Wherever and whenever you go, you’re always welcome back, whole-heartedly.

jamie’s last blog post..A New Moon ~ A New Practice

@Gretchen – Thanks for stopping by! Glad to know I’m not alone on this one. You summed it up perfectly: “I love the idea of quitting being ALSO about moving towards something we want.” And it seems like so often we know we want to quit before we know what it is we’re moving toward.

@Sarah – That is an awesome post! Love the revelations you had about loving swimming, but hating training and competing, and therefore not loving being on the swim team. I’ll have to spend some time seeing what parts of wrecking I love, which I don’t, and see what bubbles up!

@LaWendula – Agreed – even if I get nothing more out of this experience than to explore my “quitting issues”, it’s well worth it. But in reality, I’ve already gotten more out of it than that!

@Kavindra – Excellent point – wrecking a book really does work out to be very cheap therapy!

My revelations have been along different lines, but surprising and helpful none the less. I hated this book at first, now it’s like the best 13 bucks I ever spent – much cheaper than a 50 minute hour on the couch! :)

Kavindra’s last blog post..A Wonderful Nurse, a New Visitor, and a Surprise