Starting and stopping: When to give up? When to persevere? Who's to say, anyway?

Many years ago, I wanted to do something different, so I taught myself to play the harmonica. It was a bit arduous and I didn’t get that far, although I managed a passable rendition of Jingle Bells. After performing the song for my long-suffering colleagues, I set the instrument aside and have not picked it up since. 

Earlier still, I applied for a position as ‘policy analyst’ with the provincial women’s directorate. Though I didn’t really know what the job entailed, I thought the work would be a good fit for my communication skills and my politics, so I was pleased to get an interview. That pleasure evaporated in the face of questions about briefing ministers on complex matters and preparing contingency documents about hypothetical situations. I barely understood the questions, never mind was able to answer them; nonetheless, I was invited to complete the written portion of the assessment process. Those questions were equally opaque to me; after a valiant effort, I wrote a note saying the job was not for me and left the office before they dismissed me. And that was that. 

Both these experiences stick in my mind not as failures but simply as beginnings that came to reasonable ends. I wonder if you agree that life is full — or should be full — of such experiences. How else do we test out who we are and what we like and where we want to put our energy? 

I was reminded of these memories recently when three different newsletters landed in my inbox touting messages about stopping and starting things —  

• Start even if you can’t finish: In her book stARTistry, Becky Blades makes a compelling case for starting more things than we can possibly finish and for not apologizing for it. She asks two questions that have stuck in my mind: “What would you start if you knew you could finish?” and “What would you start if you never had to finish?” She argues that having to finish everything we start trains us to be overly cautious about starting anything, and this caution deadens our creative spirit and impulse. 
• Contrast that advice with how Jeannine Ouellette, writer & teacher, framed her recent “Writing in the Dark” substack newsletter. Begin and finish is the lesson; she quotes first Neil Gaiman —  “You need to write a lot, but more importantly, you need to finish what you write” and follows him up with Ann Patchett — “The journey from the head to the hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write…gets lost.” 
• Enter Todd Henry, author and creativity coach, who shared the philosophy of Nike founder Phil Knight in his recent newsletter:  “Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop.”

I see these three viewpoints as complementary: Definitely start things. Definitely finish some of them. Definitely give up on others. I enjoy generating ideas and setting them in motion to see where they go; I’m ok with ditching things if they’ve run their course before reaching a formal finish line. I think this makes me an entrepreneurial stARTist, with the discipline to bring to fruition those ideas that are worthy of the effort. 

How would you characterize yourself? A stARTist? A got-to-finish-er? A giver-up-but-never-stop-er? Regardless of how you might characterize yourself, I hope my thoughts have sparked your own. 

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WRITNG NEWS: “Baby overboard” is a micro memoir I wrote in late winter; it is now published and you can read it here. “Chess moves dance moves bad moves home moves” is a piece of creative nonfiction I wrote specifically for a contest in June; it earned an honourable mention from the judges. You can read it here. 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash