Quitting early and often

I quit writing every chance I get.

Every now and then I try quitting things, just to see how it goes. I quit going for walks. I quit going to the coffee shop. I quit calling my mother. I quit eating microwave popcorn every night. I quit drinking cokes.

Sometimes the quitting sticks. I haven’t had a coke in over ten years and I don’t miss them one bit. The microwave popcorn I can do without every night, but once a week, I give myself permission to indulge. I can quit calling my mother for a while, but eventually, the guilt gets to be too much. I didn’t think I missed the coffee shop until I started going back.

I can’t really quit walking. I tell myself I can. I tell myself it’s no big deal. Quitting walking is not in the least connected to the feeling of restlessness and dissatisfaction that starts to build the longer I go without moving. Walking is not necessary or essential, not even to my physical health, but to my sanity. Then I finally go for a walk and remember. Right, you need to do this.

My favorite thing to quit, though, is writing.

I quit writing every chance I get. Most recently, for about a month.

There are lots of reasons to quit writing. Because trying to get published is soul-crushing. Because the writing itself is hard. And, also, lonely. Because, truly, the wonderful idea you have for that story/essay/novel/bestseller will always be so much better than the story/essay/novel/non-bestseller you actually end up writing. Imaginary writing is lit. The actual writing is a fall from grace.

Sometimes after I’ve quit writing, I come back to it like someone who’s unwilling to let go of a grudge. I will beat this thing. I will win this game.

Other times, I drift back mindlessly, reading a draft of an old essay and then, before I know it, I’m polishing it up. Adding a new ending. I’m back at it, almost in spite of myself.

Even my purple, Halloween cat lights could not dispel my blah’s

This time, I resolved to work on revising textbook chapters until it was done. This is writing, but also, not-writing. It is more a collecting of things than it is a creative expression of universal truths.

From about mid-August through last week, textbook writing was all I did. And syllabus-building. And teaching. It wasn’t an intentional quitting, even if somewhere in the back of my mind, I was trying it out. What if this was it? What if I was done with writing? How would that be?

It turns out, for better or worse, writing isn’t something I can quit. At least, not now. For that month or so, I felt restless. Out of sorts. Empty. Flat. I thought the feeling would end when classes started. Or when the weather turned cool. When I got my fall out my fall decorations. When my hormonal weather system changed. It didn’t.

The feeling didn’t stop until I started writing again. Last Monday, I made myself write something that was not a textbook revision. A strange little something. Half-essay, half-story. I didn’t worry if it made sense or if anyone would publish it. I just wrote.

Writing like that again, I had an almost physical sensation, the parts of my brain and heart and body that had been neglected waking up again. If I could have watched an MRI of my brain, it would have lit up like fireworks. It was a softening and a blooming and a return. It was a confirmation.

At least, for now, I need to write. It’s not one of those things I can quit. There’s a comfort in having that certainty. There’s a relief in know this is necessary.

The quitting is important. The setting down. The stepping away. The quiet space to discover what you need and what you don’t.

I’d love to hear, what can you quit and what can’t you put down?

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Other great stuff I’ve read this week: the amazing Kathy Fish on metaphors and radical noticing (I love this phrase and going to be doing all the radical noticing this week). A great post about gender and the mental load women carry at Not Controversial. Also enjoying Emma Gannon’s newsletter, The Hyphen.