The Joy of Quitting

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Mastery: Robert Greene draws on the lives of Martha Graham, Charles Darwin, and others to show how pursuing mastery of the thing we love to do can lead to great things. The best thing to do if you want to avoid developing a salary addiction is to quit before you’re ahead – before you’re so far up the career ladder that earning less money seems unthinkable. This was very easy for me to do with law because I was really quite bad at it. Also, I was working on a case about ice-cream that had been going on for 19 years and I’d started having nightmares about ice-cream. 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. 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.

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. 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. After worship, I hurried upstairs, called my manager, and told them I was quitting. I didn’t need any more signs. I needed to be obedient, despite if I agreed with God or not.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? A diary in comics form, Roberts’s book collects snippets from eight years of her daily life, capturing exasperating and hysterical moments of mothering, friendship and more."— New York Times The following day, I walked into school. My fingers had swollen to the point that I couldn’t wear my rings. My legs hurt so bad I could barely cross them when I sat down. Every move brought pain. We sat down for worship. I closed my eyes to sing, and one of my friends cleared his throat and asked to share something. Oddly, in our society we look on quitting as a bad thing—a sign of laziness or a weak nature. But to me, quitting is an act of integrity and self-respect. Quitting sets boundaries. It says, “Enough is enough. This isn’t working. I’m done.”

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. Oh, that can’t be God!” I thought to myself as I rolled up my sleeves and started scouring the internet for jobs. “Because I asked for a job—and this isn’t enough money.” 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.The most ambitious (and just plain largest) collection of Keillor Roberts' memoir or autobio comics, a Drawn & Quarterly production. This book collects from a decade of work, from five previous titles--Powdered Milk (2012), Miseryland (2015), Sunburning (2017), Chlorine Gardens (2018) and Rat Time (2019)--like a summary of her life so far. I categorize this as "disability" because Keillor has both MS and is bipolar, and these experiences have been part of earlier collections, but in this one we learn even more about the weirdness of her brain (or maybe, with the weirdness of my brain, I just forgot what I had read and all of this I had read before). Always funny, especially as we get deeper into the way her mind works. But it is not mostly about her disabilities; those are just part of her life. The main focus of the book is her family, and motherhood, as always.