Lesson 88 • Quit
We stack our resumes, we stack our bios, we stack accomplishments.
The moment is quiet when craft becomes obligation. It is the capital entropy of art: hobbies trend toward jobs.
It is subtle at first. We show up. Lapses of motivation are compensated by guilt. The sense of duty sours the work. It gives it weight. Resent is its chafing.
Obligations accumulate because we value filling-up the calendar. We stack our resumes, we stack our bios, we stack accomplishments. We prescribe these things value and they become hard to let go.
The costs are steep. Time can’t be earned. The coiffers jangle less every day. When we want to spend it differently we find there’s just not enough. There will never be more.
The weight of having to do something replaces the lightness of wanting to, and yet, instead of acknowledging that shift, we double down. We convince ourselves that commitment is noble, that discipline will reignite passion. The end will justify the means. The glory of what we make will be worth the time.
But there must be a point that the time sunk is no longer worth the cost. To persevere in spite of that sunk cost — because we believe true the axiom that to quit is to fail — is to be victim to a logical fallacy.
At some point, failure is having not quit.
In a way, haphazard duty-accumulation betrays a kind of poor “financial” planning. It’s something we maybe should look at with a side-long glance. “This person,” we should think, “doesn’t have their shit together.”
So, a reminder: memento mori. Your hours are numbered. Are you really spending them the way you ought?
Furbelow
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