November 18, NanoPoblano 2020. A November blog day just like any other. Except on THIS blog day, I quit.
It had been just over one year since I was the lucky survivor of cancer. Undiagnosed for what doctors deemed “a while”, growing quietly on my right kidney, reaching Stage 3. Keeping its business to itself, without jumping over any margins, to any other organs, then showing itself, only at the last minute, through something as desperately random as a never-ending stream of blood in my urine.
Medical emails, followed by tests and re-tests during the panic of a pandemic, and in just 6½ short but agonizingly slow weeks, it was over. The whole kidney removed, and with it, the monster on my insides. Jump ahead just a little over one year later, and I thought that blogging about my journey from first symptom to medical all-clear was brilliant, and easy, and something I was ready to undertake.
I could not have been more wrong.
What should’ve been light and anecdotal posts, post-nightmare, became a greater and greater weight on me throughout the month, until, on November 18, I just stopped writing about it.
I just stopped writing, about anything.
Gee, I wonder why.
Why does a boxer quit on their stool? Why does a marathoner just walk off the course with the finish line in sight? Why do people quit working for Twitter? You can answer those questions any way you want. For me, the answers are, at their core, the same.
Because they are done, that’s why.
So today, quietly, and celebrating only with myself, I mark the second anniversary of the day I quit on my stool. For me, there was no NanoPoblano 2021. There was only walking off the course of a marathon without having even begun the race. Oh and, fuck Twitter, though I still have my two accounts there, in case My Friend Tom from MySpace ever wants to resurrect that decomposing blue bird, during what’s left of my lifetime.
But I… as usual… digress, BIG TIME.
I guess that’s who I’ve become, or more accurately, who I’ve embraced already being, in the last two years since “The Big Quit”. I’m more me, or maybe I’m just me… more. This had to have always been “me”, whoever that was. And if you knew me before “The Big Quit”, maybe I let you in on it. Also, maybe I didn’t, but if you’re here now, I’m damn sure letting you see it, every day, for 18 straight days, unlike the last time.
Okay, now YOU. We’ve all quit on our stool. So what was yours? It doesn’t have to be a monumental thing, but if it WAS monumental, that’s okay, too. If you want to share, please do. If not, just share it with yourself.
I already know what a good listener you are.
Talk to you tomorrow.
William S. Friday 
I have Plenty of big quits. Some monumental in my little corner of the earth, and some not so noteworthy. I quit a marriage, a 12 year situationship, smoking…. but in all of that Quitting, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned my absolute deal breakers (my” I’m done”), and I learned that I always come out on the other side a better and stronger human.
I got 1 more major Quit left…. but I have to be patient and wait just a bit longer. I’m hiring a marching band for that one! 🤣
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Let’s see, first I quit guilt (gave it up for Lent and never took it back). Then I decided to quit religion, my marriage, my office job, my narcissistic father, and Facebook (for little over a year). Makes me wonder what’s next!
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I don’t know that I have had big quits, more quiet walk aways.
Such a big anniversary. I am on year 7 of cancer free.
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I decided one day out of the blue in my 20s to stop making my bed. 😃
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Not a big quit but for me, but the quiet walkaway was photography, I’m sorry to say. Discouraging to see comments by those dropping THOUSANDS on “oh, this is just my casual walk around lens..” Christ on a bike, I’m not competing with this.
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I once quit my job (in Canada) from Australia over Skype. That was a pretty major life change / leap!
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I walked away from an IT job because my boss was demoted because of his health reasons (crippling headaches). I decided they could go F themselves. I also had some health problems because of this “don’t care about us-that we have bodies-job” so I decided I cared about health, I cared about people–not a slave to the small money machine that would help me get new car tires and pay off my school loans and maybe help while doing grad school while I got myself shingles on top of it all (in my 20s). Then I started getting Spirit to speak to me directly, pertinent books showed up on the steps to my apartment; and then magic came; and then, eventually, I built a really nice life where I continue to do what i think is right, and I always work for myself. Then I never expected to want to have children, but that also happened. And, I continue to build, expand and try to bring people under my magical wing.
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I definitely have times when I quit things, or stopped before I started. Part of me thinks it’s just the way it goes with ADHD and I have to make peace with unfinished things. But then some quits have been good for me – ending toxic friendships, leaving groups that have been bad for my mental wellbeing, and like you, realising I’ve said enough or written enough for now and it’s time to move on. I’m still recovering from autistic burnout which means I quit working for a few years, without really understanding why until recently. I think if I didn’t know I wouldn’t be able to blog this month, and of course you and Ra are so good at gathering community ☺️ Sometimes quitting lets us see what’s important.
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I quit taking violin when I was 12 because I wanted to be cool. I quit going to church at about age 14 because I no longer believed most of the things the Catholic Church taught, plus their teachings about hell had really messed me up. I dropped out of college with only one paper to write before getting a degree. I quit a marriage that I didn’t think was working. I later reversed, or tried to reverse, some of these big quits. (Switched to guitar, got my degree, tried different churches, don’t go to church now but believe something’s out there, etc.) I guess I’m a person who tries, fails, and tries again.
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