The Quitter

I am not the girl who stays. Longevity is not my strong suit. I have a tendency to walk away from anything and everything that does not serve me well. I will never be the girl who earns a 15-year service award at work or who celebrates her 50th wedding anniversary with the man of my dreams. Perhaps it is in part due to boredom. Maybe we put too much pressure on ourselves to stick things out just so we can brag about it to our friends. Look at me! I outlasted everyone! I will probably never really personally relate to any of that. When things get sticky, I bolt. When the negatives outweigh the positives in every possible direction, I check out.

I watched a TikTok video a few weeks ago where this girl was talking about how she was also a quitter. As a child, she quit ballet, soccer, friendships, etc etc. And rather than being made to feel bad about it, her parents encouraged her to find things that she loved. I wish that I had saved it or favorited it or whatever you do on TikTok when you are good at using apps like that, but I watched it and then scrolled right on past. But the message has stuck with me. For so many years, I have felt guilty for my lack of staying power. I haven’t always been the most responsible in my decision making skills. I have left more than one job without giving a decent (or any) notice. Some of those situations I regret, and others I would do again without thinking twice.

I changed jobs three times in 2021, a new record for me. It’s almost embarrassing to say it out loud, but I am at the point in my life where I no longer really care about what other people think about me. Actually, that’s a dirty lie. I really do care what other people think. Maybe a little too much.

Anyone who knows me in real life is aware that I have spent the last 100 (ahem, 25) years working in retail, with 23 of those being in management. It’s enough to grind a girl’s soul down to the very nubs. I have gone round and round trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up, except that I woke up one day and realized that I was all grown up and was not where I wanted to be. So I did the only thing that I knew how to do: I panicked. I can blame part of it on the fact that I was (at the time) nearing 40, and a mid-life crisis was on the horizon anyway. And then my best friend died extremely prematurely, and my panic went into overdrive. All of a sudden, I was faced with the idea that my time on earth was not guaranteed either. What if next month, next week, the next day was my last and I had spent my entire life wishing that I had done something more with it? The past eighteen months have been the result of that soul searching, and I sadly have not found much more than when I began.

Near the end of 2020, I left the store manager position that I had held for three years and started a new adventure. Over the course of the past twelve months, I have worked in corporate optometry and corporate dentistry, learning the hard way that neither of these practices work in the best interest of the patients. I determined that I had failed at trying something new, and so I applied for another retail management position. I hit it off with the district manager and knew that we could work well together. When the company made the offer, it was more money than I had ever earned in a year in my entire life, and I felt like I had finally done it. I had finally struck gold. As always, I threw myself into the ring and was determined to succeed. I showed up on day one with my color-coded planner and new notebook and was ready to take on the world. And it worked for awhile, this newfound resolve. I have always loved a challenge. Show me a team who needs leadership, a building that needs merchandising, customers who need better service and I will make it happen. But even my sheerest resolutions could not make me succeed there. The city that I was working in was not the safest. During my first week, I called the police on an employee who threatened to punch me because I caught him on his cell phone. The officer who responded warned me that this place was unlike any that I had ever worked before. My car was vandalized twice. My parents both advised me to find something else. I was mad because it meant starting over again. On top of all of this, the company was not functioning well. The structure was a mess from the start, and I could see why they had filed for bankruptcy a year or so before. That should have been my first red flag, but I bought into the rainbows and unicorns that they were selling to me at the interview. I saw only what they wanted me to see. Rational thinking be damned.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed elsewhere for a position that is not retail or sales related. It is still management, but in a completely different industry than anything that I have ever tried before. I had to make it through four levels of interviews before I was offered the position. I am nervous but also excited. I am looking forward to a new beginning, but also waiting for the rug to be pulled out from underneath me again. This cannot be my new normal, starting and stopping, over and over again. What happened to my consistency? I am the girl who daydreamed of running the world some day. My resume was not supposed to be this long.

And so here I am, trying to figure out what the lesson is. What am I supposed to learn from all of this? Maybe there is no lesson at all. Maybe I am never going to figure it all out. The holidays are over now, and I think that for many of us, it is a time of reflection. For me, the new year is always a little sad. The pessimist in me doesn’t look at the new year with excitement, but rather with trepidation. I have always been a little (a lot) jaded. The future scares me. I am trying to work on this, to be more positive, but this takes time and a whole lot of effort. I am trying to remind myself to spend my free time doing things that I love instead of worrying. During this short break from classes, I am trying to be crafty, to read books, to make myself finally sit down and relax for once. My health has suffered this year, mostly because I am always on edge and not taking care of myself the way that I should be. My stress level is off the charts. My doctor told me to try yoga, but I keep resisting. I really need to find a way to calm down.

I have a couple of weeks before I start my new job. I am going to take that time to chill out and attempt to find my bliss. I have a pinterest board full of projects that are calling my name. The twins have been begging me to redecorate the dollhouse that I snagged for them at Goodwill early this year. I want to take naps and cuddle with my dog and try to remember that there is more to my existence than work and trying to achieve sales goals.

For the moment, I will remind myself that I owe no one any explanation for the choices that I make in my life. I am as successful as I need to be, and I am a good mom to my girls. My dog worships me. Nothing else matters.

Nothing.