No quitter

Weekend Wordsmith offers "Quit" as a prompt this week.

I have never quit a job, as in, "Sayonara, I'm outta here!" When I was waiting on tables I fantasized a lot about doing that. I figured there would come the one day that I would be overloaded with tables full of impatient people and working with a slow cook, and I would just go into the kitchen, take off my apron, put my order pad on the make table and say, "G'bye," and go out and get into my car and go home. I didn't do that though. My departure from that work was sudden but unsatisfying. I broke my ankle in the middle of the night and called in disabled for six months. At the end of the recovery period, I was too weak and slow to resume waitressing.

I'd like to quit the photography class. I'm tired of using only the Manual option: it takes me so long to focus and get the exposure right . . . and all I want to do is take pictures. I feel as if I have the nuts and bolts in place now and just need practice. But I won't stop going; one of these days I will have an aha moment and it all will fall into place. And at the end of the class I get a book telling me how to make a living at photography and will be able to retire and simply wander around the countryside taking beautiful and inspiring photographs for which buyers will pay hundreds of dollars.

Mm-hm.

I would have liked to quit hiking home a few weeks ago, when I was on the everlasting uphill to home. If I had, likely I'd still be sitting by the side of the road waiting for rescue.

That's the problem with quitting. There's always the next thing that happens. Or not. If I quit, I'm just stopped. Perhaps without a job, without further knowledge that is readily available to me, sitting by the side of my life.

I think that I don't know how to quit.

Except for the drinking. That wasn't quitting anyway.

That was beginning.