Quitting For Dummies is an editorial written by Tim Clark and shared with The Ugly Writers
Quitting is easy. Most times, it’s a lot easier than sticking around. The longer a person stays, the more they become ensnared in relationships, intrigues, entanglements, and spiderwebs of interpersonal connections. Time is critical, these attachments grow, tighten, wrapping around the unsuspecting, pulling things closer, until you it’s hard to see where one person ends, and another person begins.
Mobility is the key. What Michael Herr called “the moving target survivor” subscription. Moving is wonderful. Take steps and stairs, get your heart rate up there, and get the blood flowing. Movement is tonic. Sitting is the new smoking, you know. And I quit smoking; I’m a natural, quitting with the best of them.
I left my job at lunchtime and never went back. Other times, I’ve stayed past my expiration date and made friends and developed close ties that have been severed, “the past ain’t even worth livin’ in, it’s just a nail that keeps being driven in.”[1] All of the people are gone, different jobs, different places, new acquaintances, we’ve moved on, or out, or up, or backwards. Only to be left in the lurch by a new job, a promotion, a transfer, and then a whole new crew, and the apple cart is kicked over, and you have to start again.
Of course there are some good memories. When I was working as a bricklayer, a friend of mine walked over and asked:
“Do you have a pack of cigarettes I could borrow?”
“I could probably give you a couple, but I only have about a half of a pack, myself.” I told him. How do you respond to a question like that?
He had dropped a whole pack of cigarettes down the cement block wall, and wanted to tell me, and then borrow one, and somehow the sentences ran together, and he ended up trying to borrow a whole pack of cigarettes.
I haven’t seen him in years.
At one job, I knew a guy, he was the maintenance man, at a screen-printing plant, and we used to play chess, I had a small travel board in my desk drawer. After you made a move, you put your magnet on the outside of the drawer, and the opponents in the drawer. We must have played twenty games and never finished one. It would get corrupted, somebody would try to find a pen and close the drawer with a little too much enthusiasm, or we’d forget to change magnets, or… there were dozens of calamities, and we never cared, we never stopped, and we never finished a game. I haven’t seen him, or the chess board, in almost thirty years.
At one point in my current job, somebody, some nameless, faceless, wealthy, came in and bought all the property around the building where I work. Demolition, refurbishment, and deep renovation kicked off all around us. Every day, construction workers dressed in neon-colored shirts, hard hats, and sturdy work boots wandered down the streets, across parking lots, and into and out of buildings all around us.
One day, as I was pulling into the parking lot, one of the construction workers was walking through our lot. He motioned for me to stop and roll down my window.
“Hey, you remember me? I used to sleep in that doorway.” He said, pointing to the recessed entrance, where a person could sleep, mostly out of sight, and mostly out of the rain. It’s been well used all the time I’ve been here. “You used to give me coffee, and snacks. Well, I got a job, and an apartment, up on Maple Canyon. Thanks, you guys were always so nice.”
“Of course, I remember. I’ll tell everyone about how far you’ve come. Congratulations.” I told him. I didn’t remember him; there were a lot of people using that doorway, and most of the time, you try to forget. It is too painful to remember. I swear every cup of coffee or sleeve of crackers took a toll; all the agony of seeing people with nothing, not even a roof over their heads, took a little piece of my balance. When you give somebody a bottle of water and they ask God to bless you, it becomes more than a bottle of water, more than a simple act of kindness; it is almost an admission of failure. An apology for being part of a system that has left some people so far behind. But I did tell the owners about the man’s success. They were delighted.
It was the last time I saw him.
I’ve been working at this job for… well, I’m not sure, it’s been a long time, I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. I don’t even remember most of the names, and the faces are fading. In two weeks, give or take, I will walk out the door for the last time. Retirement and the long, gentle slide into that goodnight. I’ll leave my key and my security card with the new manager, or the old building superintendent, or somebody, and then I will go off and find something else: volunteer, part-time employment, more people to forget. Meeting new people is the best way to exorcise the old.
[1] Empty Lives, By Gram Parker
Read more from Tim Clark by visiting his website at Life, Explained or by checking out his previous write-ups here at The Ugly Writers.
