Calling it quits

Not the blog, sillies. But it has been a week for quitting.

I quit doing other people's work for them. I will never be one of those people who says, "It's not my job." I err the other way and end up taking on other people's stuff. A young colleague asked me to edit a white paper he'd drafted. The paper was poorly written and sloppy in presentation. Within the paper were seven or eight mini-profiles, so I edited three of them and sent it back with a note.

"I edited three of the profiles to give you an idea for how they might be improved. I would be happy to review your next draft once you've had time to work on the others."  He actually came over and told me I forgot to do all of them! "There are five more," he said pleadingly. I explained it was his task to go back and try again on the rest of them. Oh.  But he did it, we tweaked the final draft together and we both learned something. Regrettably, he called me ma'am.

I quit torturing my eyebrows. I really do not know the difference between $70 eyebrows and $20 eyebrows. I shape my eyebrows at home myself, so all I know is that magnifying mirrors and good tweezers are a dangerous thing. Note to self: you don't have to get every little stub.

I quit worrying about the yellow bags. The trash is picked up once a week (Wednesdays) in our neighborhood. No limits ... all you can drag out to the street as long as it's in a bag. You can buy yellow bags from the city (box of 10 for $5.64) and they will pick up those bags on Saturday. We've lived here almost four years, and a neighbor a couple of houses down has had at least one yellow bag at the end of their driveway every Saturday without fail. Every Saturday.

Lordy, I have squandered way too much time wondering what is so dang volatile that you have to pay extra for it to go out on Saturday. Why would you pay extra for the yellow bags? What's really in the bags? Would they mind if I took a tiny peek? Do they know Wednesdays are unlimited?  Are the trash people in on this scam as well? I would ask for your theories, but I quit worrying about it this week. 

Finally, I quit the Activia Challenge. I started 10 days ago for the all the reasons one might want to speed intestinal transit time. Plus, I wanted one of those flat bellies like you see on TV. I liked the taste and all that, but I didn't exactly feel like it was doing the Indy 500 through my digestive tract. In fact, it just made me gassy and bloated. Like the opposite of flat belly. So not liking it. 

Comments

[Peg]

Whew, you scared us all for a second there. Quit all that other stuff, just don't quit the blog!

Your workplace anecdote reminded me why I quit doing editing jobs a few years ago. All too often, folks confuse editing with rewriting and give you utter garbage that you are supposed to "fix." It became profoundly embittering. So I stopped. Yay! Sometimes calling it quits feels great.

[Cathy]

Eyebrows. Some of mine are grey/white now, and are a bit difficult to camouflage with Clinique's taupe eyebrow powder. I've tried mascara, but can't seem to color the brow hairs without getting mascara on my skin. Then it just looks messy.

Here I am, going silver with my hair and thinking of dyeing my eyebrows. Now does that make any sense???!!!

P.S. Please don't stop blogging!!!

[Donna Pekar]

Cathy -- for some reason, it makes perfect sense to me to think about dying eyebrows. I mean, you'd hope you could do it with makeup, but if you can't, you can't. For me, gray hair isn't about being natural -- I just think it's a cool look. And I don't think gray eyebrows are a cool look. I'm with you!

[barbara]

I'm dying my eyebrows for years.
Only important thing ist, to choose the right (not too dark) color. So I mix dark & light blonde.
It's so much more comfortable than eyebrow powder.