Maybe I’m a quitter, I said.
Maybe it’s my purpose: to start things, try things, quit.
Maybe this is how some of us learn, move in the world.
Experience is the best teacher. No matter how much imagining, planning, or projecting you do, you can never really know what life has in store. You can never really know what will happen.
I always see the good in situations in the beginning. This can become my achilles heel. I hold on to the good like a life raft, gripping harder and harder. There has to be something good here, I say to myself, sinking deeper and deeper into the water until I’m gasping for breath.
Sometimes you have to let go of the raft so you can swim to the shore. It’s not that far, you can make it. You have to save yourself.
Imagine a ribbon connecting you, she said. And imagine a giant pair of scissors cutting the ribbon. It’s over! It’s done!
Seth Godin calls it the dip:
Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out fun…then gets really hard, and not much fun at all. You might be in a Dip—a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it’s really a Cul-de-Sac—a total dead end. What really sets superstars apart is the ability to tell the two apart.
Ask yourself: is this something that will respond to guts, effort and investment?
Asking this helps you decide what to do next.