Finding the Courage to Quit

Welcome to Creatives Anonymous, a weekly newsletter about navigating creativity in the 21st century. It inspires, encourages, and empowers readers to take back their creative power.

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Here are some words you may have seldom heard throughout your life: it’s okay to quit. 

As a society, we have a strange relationship with the word “quitting.” Many of us Millennials have grown up with Boomer parents, where the status quo was to push through, no matter how badly we wanted to quit. 

As adults, though, it’s not only okay to quit; it’s strategic. Quitting allows us to open up our capacity and energy to bring in new things while leaving what drains us behind. Time is our most valuable resource, and we need to fill it wisely. We need to be able to quit if we are to protect that time—it’s not worth spending our time on activities that don’t move the needle forward or that we aren’t 100% passionate about. 

Quitting is only strategic if you do it for the right reasons. Quitting for the sake of quitting is one thing, but quitting to free up your time to do something else is entirely different.

Quitting requires us to have an honest conversation with ourselves. We need to take a hard look at who we are and what we truly want so we can assess whether or not our actions and activities will get us there. 

In other words, don’t quit because it’s hard. Quit because it’s misaligned. 

We feel guilty when we quit because we didn’t follow through on a commitment like we let ourselves and everyone around us down. But the truth is that we’re letting ourselves down more by doing something we don’t love for the sake of, more often than not, a self-imposed commitment. 

I’d rather quit while I’m ahead versus crash and burn. I’d rather have the foresight to give something up rather than let myself get overwhelmed, overcommit, and let others down. I’m very selective about what I say yes to and pursue because I know I will want to give it 150%—and there are only so many things in your life you can give that kind of energy. 

This can apply to our creative projects, especially big projects. Case in point: this year, I thought I needed to learn graphic design (it's still a goal of mine at some point), but the problem was that I was doing this for the wrong reasons. I only did it because I thought I needed more skills in my arsenal instead of doubling down on my current skills and how to position them. 

So, I quit because it was no longer aligned with my business vision. And that’s okay. But I wouldn’t have known that unless I took the plunge and started down that journey. 

Quitting isn’t all bad; it permits us to try and gives us the permission and flexibility to experiment. We need to give ourselves grace and not feel bad when things don’t pan out, and we have to quit. We just have to brush it off, say it’s not for us, and move on to something else. 

But it’s not to say that once we quit something, we can never go back to it; it might just not be right for the season of life you’re in now. 

When we expect ourselves to follow through, we likely don’t. Like anything else, creative pursuits invite exploration so we can discover and learn along the way. If we had all the answers, why bother at all? Half the fun is what we learn about ourselves on the journey along the way. 

It’s also okay for us to change our minds. Change is constant. We get to know ourselves more and more each day, and with that comes changing interests and hobbies. We might have some we carried over from different seasons throughout our lives, but every day, we’re finding something new that gets us excited and more aligned with our overall life vision. 

It’s okay to leave old hobbies behind and drop what no longer serves you. It’s okay to change course if something isn’t working. Nothing in our lives is set in stone; we can make a change any time. In fact, it’s healthy to make changes. It means we’re growing and taking part in the self-discovery process. 

Don’t beat yourself up because you tried and quit. Instead, be thankful you had the foresight to know when to cut your losses and try something else. 

Give yourself the courage to quit something not for you, whether it’s a misaligned client engagement, a creative project, or something else entirely. Trust me, you’ll thank yourself for it later. 

CREATIVE CORNER

• 🎞️ What I’m Consuming: I started Throne of Glass. So far, I’m team ACOTAR > TOG

• 💡 What I’m Loving: I’ve started getting back into sketching again, and it’s been lovely to sit out and do it on the porch.

• 🎨 What I’m Working On: I got back into my novel and wrote about 4K words last week. I also finally hopped into Lightroom to edit some of the photos I want to print. Progress!

• 🎉 What I’m Celebrating: I just passed the 3-year anniversary of quitting my full-time job and going self-employed.

• 💭 Weekly musing:

Thank you 💕

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