Quit for a Day!
Contributor

“I can’t do this anymore! I’m no business woman. I quit,” I said last week when receiving notice about a form I was supposed to have filed but hadn’t. Sometimes I just don’t know, what I don’t know, which leads to frustration.

Over twenty years ago, as a lay woman running a Catholic Church, I ran into a great deal of conflict. I spent a lot of time doing conflict resolution, not my favorite thing to do, but necessary. Amidst this conflict and all of the other expectations that are part of ministry, I found myself wanting to quit on numerous occasions.

“So quit,” my friend and mentor, the Presbyterian minister in our town told me one day as we met for breakfast at a local restaurant.

“I can’t quit,” I responded.

“Quit for a day,” he replied.

What a novel idea, I thought. The reality was that even though I took days off, those days were usually filled with thinking about what was happening at church and how best to address those problems, resulting in me never getting a real day off. It was a burn-out situation. Quitting for a day allowed me to drop everything for that day until the next day when I could pick up where I had left off, refreshed and more able to deal with the problems. This helped me be able to continue in this position until I was ready to move on.

I’ve been thinking about this as the thought of all I need to do if I am to make it as an independently published author has been pushing me to quit. I don’t want to quit writing. I just would like to fade back into the woodwork where I can quietly write without worrying about all of the marketing and business aspects of writing.

One of the many challenges of starting your own business is that it can be all pervasive, taking up every waking moment. This is a recipe for burnout and eventually quitting. Quitting for a day helps put it back into perspective and gives a necessary break.

And so, rather than quitting altogether, I quit for a day or two at a time, then pick it back up when I’m ready.

How about you? Do you need to quit for a day? How do you find balance juggling all that needs to be done?

For more by Patricia Robertson, go to my website, www.patriciamrobertson.com

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