When It's OK to Quit

​I had never quit anything. Never.
 
(Wait, except when I was five, and I told my mom I didn’t want to go to gymnastics anymore because I already knew how to do a cart wheel...anyway..)
 
I thought I would never say it’s okay to quit something. Everything I’ve gotten myself into so far in life, I have finished. Or have moved on to something else. For example, I left my job at the YMCA in Nashville because I accepted a job at the newspapers in Texas.
 
But when I “quit” my job in Texas a couple weeks ago, I didn’t (and still don’t) have a new job. That’s why my dad said to me when I told him I was leaving Texas with no job prospects in sight, “sooo, you’re quitting your job?...”
 
He wasn’t trying to be mean. It’s a fair question. My entire life I have been taught to work. My entire life I have been doing something whether it was school, basketball, softball, babysitting or internships. And honestly, even I thought I would always just be working my way up, one job after another, toward my dreams.
 
I still am…just looks a little different right now.

​My job at the Aransas Pass Progress and Ingleside Index was first a reporter then I was promoted to managing editor last August. I was the only full time reporter. Which meant I was covering everything. City council meetings, school board meetings, school news, city news, police department news, fire department news, features….then sports. I learned A LOT. I sat at my first city council meeting not knowing what 70% of what was being discussed even meant. Seriously. But I learned. Rezoning. Annexing. City taxes. How to read a budget. How to read city, police, school, other department documents. How to ask questions about those things. The list goes on and on. As managing editor, I got all the content ready for each page of the paper. Edited the content for the papers. Assisted with layout and proofed the pages on press day. I also maintained the papers websites and social media pages.
 
Sports were put on the back burner. We always had sports in the papers each week, but sports weren’t front page news most weeks. And when they were, it’s usually because I came up with a sports story that could be front page.
 
As time went by, I was having to pick meetings over games to attend. I came up with the Playbook Live during football season to one keep our football coverage fresh each week and two so I could do something sports related. (Can watch some of those interviews over on the Videos page.)
 
Don’t get me wrong. I got GREAT experience at the papers. Met and worked with great people. I wanted a foot in the door for my first job, and that’s what I got.
 
But I want more. I wanted to have passion for what I was doing again.
 
Matt and I decided I would travel with him about a couple months before we married. We saw each other for eight days total during the eight months he was gone last season. It was terrible, but we did it.
 
When Matt first brought it up, I hesitated. Then I realized how I felt I was cutting myself short at the newspapers. I had listened to Clay Travis with Fox Sports and Outkick the Coverage talk about his journey to where he is. He worked one job to pay the bills and another for passion. He took risks. So, I decided I would take a risk.
 
The more I thought about it the more I saw I was too young to be cutting myself short. To already be losing passion in my job. But it was because I wasn’t focusing on sports. Point blank.
 
To me, it didn’t make much sense to be away from Matt while not enjoying my job. So, why not travel with Matt, and if all else fails, I’ll blog about minor league baseball like crazy. Which is why I started dreams & seams.
 
To me, it didn’t make sense why I had to wait until Friday each week to be excited because it was finally time to go cover a football game. I wanted to be excited every day like I was on Fridays. And I knew that was not going to happen at the papers anymore.
 
That’s why I say I moved on (instead of I quit.) No more settling. No more selling myself short. No more city council meetings over basketball games.
 
I’m not sure what is next for me. But I know I will work hard. As my mom says, I’ll go knock down doors. I’ll be told no. I’ll probably submit content for free just to get my name out there. But at least, I’ll REALLY be working toward my dreams.

I'm not going to motivational speak on this post. Not now anyway. Because I'm not sure if this decision is going to be a good one in the long run. But I do know I'm taking charge of my success and passions and happiness. I know I won't regret giving this a shot. 
 
Some say I quit. I say I'm moving on to focus on continuing toward dreams I’ve already worked so hard for, to focus on using my God-given talents and to focus on enjoying “working” every day. And to me, that's OK.

(Proverbs 16:9 -- trusting the Man upstairs.)

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