My Life as a Quitter

I recently quit my job to listen to my inner muse—and it has me thinking about quitting in a whole new way.

When I look back (and I have, many times), I see a pattern: I’ve always been a quitter. Jobs, relationships, basketball in the eighth grade… my life has been a series of walking away from things that no longer felt right or didn’t turn out the way I expected.

For most of my life, I’ve told myself this was a flaw. I’ve even blamed my parents for “letting me quit.” I used to joke that I could have been in the WNBA if they had just made me stick with it.

But now I’m starting to question that narrative.

Somewhere along the way, we decided that quitting is a failure—that walking away means you didn’t try hard enough, didn’t push through, didn’t have what it takes. But why is leaving something that doesn’t feel aligned seen as weakness? Why is choosing yourself framed as giving up?

When I really think about it, I can see a different version of my life—the one where I didn’t quit. I might still be in a marriage where I felt miserable. Still working a job that drained me. Still living a life that looked fine from the outside but felt completely disconnected from who I am.

And that version of me feels far more like a loss than anything I’ve walked away from.

What if quitting isn’t failure, but discernment?

What if it’s not about giving up, but about choosing again?

Because quitting, the way I’ve come to understand it, isn’t about avoiding hard things. It’s not about walking away the moment something becomes uncomfortable. It’s about recognizing when something no longer fits—and having the courage to say so.

It takes guts to admit, “This isn’t working.”
To say, “This doesn’t make me happy.”
To acknowledge, “This isn’t who I am anymore.”

And then to let it go.

Quitting, in that sense, isn’t the end of something—it’s the beginning of something more honest. It creates space. It makes room for a life that actually feels like yours.

We all have the right to choose the life we want to live. We have the right to change our minds. To evolve. To listen inward and trust what we hear—even when it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.

Maybe I’ve been a quitter my whole life.

Or maybe I’ve just been someone who keeps choosing herself.