Not So Quietly Quitting
I had a conversation with
and I cannot stop thinking about it, in a really good way. Emily is the founder of Emily McDowell Studios, which became Em&Friends which became a disrupter (also in a really good way) in the greeting card industry. I have sent many of Emily’s cards to family and friends and have received them too. Her cards are hilarious and gutting and say the things you truly think and feel that never used to be anywhere near the greeting card space until Emily came to town. This town is proverbial of course. Emily’s cards first went viral in her Etsy shop. The 2013 Valentine’s day card (see pic below) was Etsy’s most shared post of the year, and eventually Emily’s cards were pretty much everywhere the cool cards were.
Emily came on Life’s Accessories, the podcast. Her accessory was a scarf. She had me at sc….. Emily purchased this scarf in 2013 at ABC Carpet and Home just when her brand was about to take off. She still has the scarf, but guess what? She no longer has the brand. In 2022 she left it all behind. Emily now runs a consulting practice for entrepreneurs where she advises mostly creative types on how to run their businesses. Emily has learned more about herself from the stuff that she quitted than from the stuff she started. She said that to me on the podcast, and my mouth dropped down to where my own scarf was resting around my neck. That sentence is really what I have not stopped thinking about since we spoke.
I always thought quitting was a bad thing. I mean it does kind of have a negative connotation. I’ve prided myself on not quitting things, on having stick-to-itiveness. But then my conversation with Emily made me re-visit some things I quit. A few of them I may go back to, and a few I hope never to go back to.
Things I Quit
Piano: I quit taking piano lessons in fifth grade. My wise mother and even wiser grandmother told me that I would one day regret this choice. It was a choice for me as the rule in my family was that I had to stick to the lessons for two years. I made it to three (and if we are being technical, a half.) My grandmother once said to me “think about how lovely it would be to sit down to a piano at a dinner party and play for the guests.” My fifth grade brain thought this sounded insane. What kind of parties was she going to? And then guess what? In 2016, this actually happened. I was at a lovely dinner party at a lovely friend’s house and said friend sat down at the piano and played. This friend clearly did not quit piano lessons. He played a whole slew of party favorites as we all sang along. It was awesome.
I considered learning piano again online during the pandemic but never took action. We have a piano in our living room, which is now kind of my office and I can see it out of the left corner of my eye as I type this. I have not given up on piano quite yet, but I have made peace with never playing at a dinner party, unless the guests have a hankering for Heart and Soul.
French : I started taking French in seventh grade after one unsuccessful year of Latin. I really liked the beautiful French language, but I was so not good at it. I took French through all four years of high school feeling like a total failure when we read L’Etranger (The Stranger by Albert Camus) in eleventh grade. I am not sure if it was the French prose or the existential themes, but I couldn’t handle it. My French skills were not up to snuff so much so that I failed the language placement test freshman year in college and had to take it there for one semester. My parents sat it on that college level French class during parents weekend and my dad (whose French was tres good) suggested that I continue to take it even if/when I did place out of the requirement. I passed the test the next semester and dropped the language like a bad habit.
Like le piano, I have at times regretted quitting French. A recent trip to France got me parlez-ing once again. Since my first day back in Les Etats Unis , I am (re) learning French avec Duo Lingo.
Peloton: Like a lot of people, I jumped on the Peloton band wagon during Covid and I got really into it. I rode the magical bike that goes nowhere several times a week and got a little bit obsessed with my metrics. I planned my week out based on the ride schedules. But then my back starting bothering me after the rides, and no amount of epic sing alongs or even yacht rock rides could get me back on the bike. The bike is still in our basement and acts as a nice towel holder.
Quitting the bike gave me time to going back to practicing yoga in person late in 2023 and that has felt really good. I forgot how much I loved being with my yoga friends and teachers. Practicing yoga gives me time to think in ways that the bike never could. I leave class with several creative and good (at least I think!) ideas every time. That plus my back has never felt better.
Email lists: This falls under the category of opting out. We are coming out of a particularly heavy week of promotional emails on the heels of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It took some time to unsubscribe to pretty much every email that came in my inbox over the last few days, but it was so worth it.
I have made room for emails with super interesting information. I subscribe to some excellent Substack newsletters including those by
, , , , , , Jo Piazza’s and more. Having thoughtful, funny and interesting writing come to my inbox is way better than the threatening “act now or these will all be gone” deals. Ideas and introspection (and not promotion for items I don’t need) makes checking email so much more enjoyable.Saying yes: I (used to) have a problem saying no. I was really (really!) good with yes. Can you volunteer on this committee? Yes. Can you have coffee with me and tell me how to write a book? Sure - no big deal. Can you come to this event? Actually can you plan it the whole thing? Roger that. Novelist Anne Lamott famously said “no is a complete sentence.”
And that is now a word/sentence I have gotten used to. Saying no and not always yes has given me the time to do the things I really want to do like focusing on my family and friends/people I want to be with. Plus saying no allows me to write more. I just said a big no to something and that gave me the time and space to spend the last few weeks getting a pretty good start to essays that may just be chapters one and two to a new book.
What have you quitted and also what have you started? I would love to know!!
NEW BOOK EVENT!!
I will be reading from and talking about the new anthology ON BEING JEWISH NOW on my home turf — Shir Ami in Newtown, PA on Thursday December 19th at 7pm. Register here. It’s free! Plus copies of the book will be there for sale.
I love how candid you are
;❌⭕️❌⭕️
This is such a good one Rachel!!