Prime Time Living: I Quit!

My parents raised me to not be a quitter. When I was 8 years old, I told them I wanted to stop taking piano lessons just a few months after starting. They explained it was wrong to walk away from something just because it was no longer fun.

Throughout my childhood, I watched my parents follow through on commitments and finish projects I was sure they’d love to walk away from. I once asked Dad why he didn’t quit a particularly stressful, time-consuming volunteer position. He explained he’d made a three-year commitment, and quitting wasn’t honorable.

In the decades since then, there have been more than a few things I’ve wanted to quit, but my parents’ training and example caused me to stay the course.

About six weeks ago, though, I read something that altered my view of quitting.

Bob Goff, an author and entrepreneur I admire, stated in a book I was reading that he quits something every Thursday, and he urged readers to do the same. I was skeptical but began listing things I could quit. I could only come up with a dozen things. How in the world, I wondered, had he been able to quit one thing a week for several years?

But after reading further, I understood what he was talking about and decided to become a quitter, too.

On the following Thursday, I quit Twitter. I had created an account a couple of years ago, tweeted twice that day, logged out and never returned. Quitting Twitter was easy. But quitting something I didn’t actually do seemed like cheating, so I quit playing Words With Friends, as well.

Over the next five weeks, I kept on quitting, one Thursday at a time.

It was fairly easy to stop sprinkling salt on food before even tasting it. More difficult was breaking the habit of resetting my alarm for 30 minutes later than its original time when I woke up more than 10 minutes before it was originally set. Silly maybe, but I’ve stopped, so it’s a moot point.

One of the hardest things to quit was carrying my phone with me everywhere (literally). Just as difficult was breaking a longtime habit of checking Facebook frequently throughout the day and instead limiting myself to a 15-minute visit at lunch and again in the evening.

My initial belief that I’d quickly run out of things to quit was wrong. Instead, my list of things to cease continues to grow; it includes things like regretting past mistakes, worrying about the inevitable changes in my aging body and driving more than seven miles per hour over the highway speed limit. Just for fun, I also plan to quit caring about what people think of me, as well as assembling the edges of a jigsaw puzzle first!

I’m confident that while I’m quitting one thing every Thursday, I’ll pick up things along the way that can and should later be discarded. And I’m sure some of the things I quit will insidiously sneak back in and need to be quit a second time.

But that’s OK, because I’ve come to enjoy being a quitter!

Patti Miinch, a long-time resident of Cape Girardeau currently living in Fenton, Mo., is an author, mother (and mother-in-law) of two, grandmother of three and retired educator; while she has many loves, spending time with her family, sports, travel and reading top the list.