I have hang-ups about quitting. Which is to say, I often have beat myself up, in the past, because I feel I quit things too easily. And, in fact, I have quit many things: jobs, relationships, careers…. One thing my stepmother Wendy (whom I hugely respect and admire) said to me, long ago, that meant a huge amount to me and that I remember often, is that she believes that one of the reasons she is on this earth is to learn patience. Actually, I think in my own case, I'm pretty good at having patience with others, at least in some ways, but I definitely lack patience with myself. And this manifests as a frequent, premature notion that it "must be time to move on!" Or that moving on will somehow make life suddenly easier, or solve some grave motivational deficit that I'm suffering from.
So to make her words my own, I would say that I believe that one of the reasons I'm on this earth is to learn how to "not quit." That is why, when I so desperately wanted to quit my job, last fall, I "stuck it out" — not because I thought it was the best thing, necessarily, but because I felt that quitting, right then, would have left me feeling more like a failure. In essence, although there were many, many logical reasons why any person who had a modicum of self-respect might have decided it was healthier to move on, I chose not to quit simply because "not quitting" was (and is) the current priority in my life.
I will acknowledge that this is probably not entirely healthy, psychologically. But having taken on the project to learn how to "not quit," I would do very badly indeed to quit that project, wouldn't I? Hmm… this is sounding circular. Well, welcome to my brain!
Why do I choose to reflect on this business of "not quitting" at this moment? Because today, July 21, 2009, is my exact one-year anniversary of working at LBridge. I have successfully "not quit" for one year, and I'm on track to finish my contract on good terms at the end of August. And I feel a huge sense of success and accomplishment, because of that.
Just sayin….
Perhaps that's one real psychological advantage, for me personally, in working on a time-delimited contract, is that I can leave a job with no guilt whatsoever, on the scheduled end-date of the contract: no loose ends, no feeling that I'm abandoning something prematurely. It's perfect for me.