The Joy of Quitting

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It’s the same with you. You can struggle, you can fight, you can persist all you want, but if you’re pursuing the wrong dream, a destiny that does not belong to you, you’ll only ever be second or third rate. The brakes will go on, and they will stay on until you come to your senses and quit. Amie came to visit Chicago and stayed at our house for the first night we were away. I got to see her just long enough to take a walk. In the grand tapestry of life, quitting is just another thread. It may be brief, but it can add depth and colour to the overall picture. The willingness to quit can open doors to new opportunities and uncharted territories. It allows you to embrace change and embrace the unknown. I’m compelled to work on this stuff. It’s what drives me. I would, and have for years, do it for free and to an audience as small as my closest friends and family. How am I supposed to know if that was God’s voice or my own? What if I was just being lazy? I asked God to please confirm, for sure, that it was His voice.

Her work gives off a kind of radical stillness. It always lowers my blood pressure... Keiler Roberts is my new hero.”—Christopher Borrelli, The Chicago Tribune Each time I pray for a job, miraculously, the Lord provides something. This has been a common theme in my life since I was young. And, just like always, this past month, I started praying for a job, and The Lord provided.

At the library

From toddler antics to doctor appointments, Keiler Roberts breathes humour and life into the fleeting present

Quitting is in, apparently. More than three million Americans quit their jobs last December, the highest number in a decade. This is a good indicator that the US economy is doing OK, but also shows that our attitudes towards work are shifting. Suddenly, dropping out is the new leaning in. Flourish: A leader in the Positive Psychology movement, Dr. Martin Seligman goes beyond happiness to examine what makes a fulfilling life. I had a 20-year career on radio and TV, working for the BBC, CNN, and NPR. At one point, I had my own show on the Travel Channel. But it was the wrong path for me. Appearing on camera made me anxious. Traveling for weeks at a time without adequate sleep or nutrition stressed me out. Constantly, my inner guide told me this wasn’t for me, yet I ignored it. For two decades, I was one of those people who pursued, as Carolyn Myss puts it, “a dream that does not belong to them.” Eventually, it put me in the hospital.

The Joy of Quitting

Divine intelligence is constantly inviting you to let go and trust, to be bold enough to jettison what isn’t working and clear away the deadwood that no longer serves you. Always, you’re invited to be spiritually defiant, to lower your umbrella of resistance and excuses, and do what’s right according to the dictates of your soul. I repeat: your soul. Not what your parents want, or your spouse, your kids, your preachers, teachers, friends, society, or the media, but you. This is your life, your journey. Consider others’ feelings, by all means; honor their path, too; but don’t let it dictate your own. The idea behind quietly quitting is that you don’t always have to or need to have the last say in something. In fact, sometimes you don’t need to say anything at all – you quietly quit from the situation. How do I resolve things? Stressing out about your unfulfilling job is, of course, a pretty privileged problem to have. But, you know what else is a problem? Accepting that the world that capitalism has created is the real world and that it works a certain way, ergo you have to work a certain way. The Joy of Quitting covers a period of eight years in Roberts’ life and involves people she lives with or interacts with daily. Her daughter plays a prominent role, along with her partner, parents, assorted family members, friends, and pets. These interactions lend themselves to humour, not only when her daughter Xia says something precocious (like asking for Tylenol because she’s sad or whispering to avoid fat-shaming squirrels) but when her partner asks the kind of questions that rile every woman up (“If I ask you something, do you promise not to get mad?”). There are one billion smokers around the world today. Eighty percent of them live in low and middle income countries.

The idea of a moral fable drawn from everyday life is extended with another new book, Creepy, a collaboration with her friend Lee Sensenbrenner that has been published alongside The Joy of Quitting. Described as a ‘picture book for grown-ups’, this second book focuses on the overwhelming presence of digital devices in the lives of today’s children. It is a charming tale that allows Roberts to flex her artistic muscle, but the story itself doesn’t dive much deeper into why these online lives have begun to supersede the real world for so many young people. Except it wasn’t a consistent job. It was a one-time thing I was going to get paid for. Forging my path I knew intellectually that I spent too much time on social media but couldn’t seem to moderate my use.It seems to be a common theme on the blog in the past couple of weeks or so to talk about hard things and how to persevere despite the difficulties. And while that’s all well and good, I think it would be a great disservice to only talk about doing the hard things that are worth doing and not the other side of that coin. When to Not Do the Hard Things The most common smoking-related causesof death for smokers are heart disease, COPD, stroke, and cancer. My parents have graciously provided financially for me for the past year, so that I can attend The Company and pursue my dreams and calling. I’ve been so thankful for them, and I won’t lie; having my finances taken care of has made my journey in Ohio ten times easier.

Only you know what that is. Only you have access to your inner GPS. You were gifted with your own mandate when you came here, a singular mission to fulfill in this lifetime. You don’t do that by tuning out the voice of intuitive guidance. Think about why you want to quit smoking, and commit those reasons to paper and to memory. Start with the big, obvious reasons, and keep going until you've listed all of the little ones, too. Smoking touches so many parts of our lives. Look at how it has affected yours in detail. Quiet quitting in this instance means just that. Quit. Don’t take part, quietly walk away without any drama, and instead choose not to argue, not to fight. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I am saying that it will feel good. Once you have grasped the concept, you’ll find yourself applying it to different areas of your life. It won’t always be dramatic, sometimes it will just be as simple as saying to yourself “I don’t need this, I think I’ll just quietly walk away.” It feels GREAT. You don’t always need to win! He loved to tell us that the only people who ever accomplished anything were the ones who persevered. And he was right, sort of. But, I’ve been working hard to correct my generational trauma.Ultimately, Roberts’ work questions the nature of meaning, and what we hold or should hold dear as we go about the business of living. It reminds one of Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, where Linda, wife of protagonist Willy Loman, defends him by pointing out that he wasn’t a great man, a rich man, someone in the paper, or the finest character that ever lived. “But he’s a human being,” she says, “so attention must be paid.”