Quit This

It was mid October 2009 and I was up to HERE with struggling.

Our monetary outflow constantly surpassed our inflow and the three businesses we started months earlier were floundering in various stages of losing their way home with the bacon.

The personal loan route of survival was nearing exhaustion as I anxiously consumed both friends with money and any dwindling sympathy for our situation.

When there’s nothing left to do…

Regular and terrifying dreams tormented me with replays of dank, colorless scenes showing an old dude skulking through the plumbing section of a big box store, naked except for a skimpy, orange apron. Those were some trying nights…

Who Got My Goat?

Regular forkfuls of failure pheasant washed down with jumbo jars of jackass juice had eventually produced the shocking awareness that has forever altered my outlook.

“People do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

The short time I spent at the end of my rope gave me a better understanding how losing hope destroys my self concept. That hurtful seed of doubt effortlessly dashes every bit of  opportunity and potential within my reach and before long I’ve lost all momentum and direction. I”m soon asking defeatist questions like: What’s it all about? What’s happening? Why bother?

About the only thing that saved me that day in the late fall of 2009 was the fact that some years earlier my family and I had developed a motto. Stolen from a second world war Canadian air corps, there wasn’t much to it but those crazy words smarted, just the same.

Good Stuff waits just past the Whine

Regardless, Press On!

To be completely honest, I sometimes reviled this stupid phrase. Blah blah blah, blah blah. What are a few silly little words gonna do?

Even though the concept of forging ahead seems trivial and simple in the extreme when I’m faced with life’s serious struggles, there’s incredible power in this all too normal mistake.

Giving up never accomplishes anything and I know this because I’ve tried that route to success often. Hail, throwing in the towel used to be one of my most favorite past times.

But that was then and this is now. Today is where the party meets Poppa.

From here on in the only thing I’m pulling the pin on is quitting.

I hope you’ll consider giving it a try, too.

Thank you, friend.

Barry out.