The Quitter
As I crank up my subscriber generating machine, which is just a fancy way of describing the one-by-one emails, text messages, LinkedIn messages, and Facebook messages I’m sending to get me 10,000 (eek!) subscribers by July 23, I’m contemplating the advice of speaker agent extraordinaire, Christa Haberstock, Creator of The Obvious Advantage™. I’ve been grappling with that damnable Obvious Advantage™ since I first heard about it, unable to figure out what the hell mine is. And then it struck me, as it has before, only this time maybe I’ve got it. You see, ever since I was very young, my dad had me pegged as a Quitter™. Which, in his book, was really bad. That’s why he made me join the swim team at the age of 7, which I’m sure I’ve talked about before and will talk about again. The point of this particular story is that it dawned on me just now that my Obvious Advantage™ is that, yes, I am a Quitter™. Always have been. Always will be. Here’s a list of things I’ve quit, in no particular order:
Preschool, the day I refused to get on the bus in spite of my mom trying to drag me onto it. No more tuna fish sandwiches and tomato juice for me! Swim team, after several years of them not letting me quit because they didn’t want me staying home watching Speed Racer. The clarinet, because it made me burp. Boy Scouts, because all the boys in my troop were mean and called me names like “spaz” and “pussy.” Hebrew High, even though it was my idea to go in the first place. Smoking pot, because it was incompatible with running cross country and track. College, so I could be a rich and famous harmonica player and novelist. Harmonica playing and novel writing then going back to college, because I needed to give up childish dreams and get a real job someday. My job at Woolworth after less than a month, for killing the plants. My job at Music Plus after two weeks, so I could ride a bicycle from Los Angeles to Palo Alto, only making it as far as Santa Cruz before my back went out. My job at Domino’s the second or third time, because now I was lost in Tucson and my car broke down in the rain, and the boss didn’t care what my excuse was.
You get the idea. Oh wait, there’s more. Eating meat and dairy so I could live on what I thought was the ideal human diet of fruit and nuts because Mahatma Gandhi, Viktoras Kulvinskas, and Dick Gregory said so. Fruit and nuts, five years later, because one day after Farmer’s Market, I was standing outside the Pollo Norteño and was really hungry. Plus I felt like eating nothing but fruit and nuts was going to kill me, even though it was the ideal human diet.
Coffee. I don’t even like coffee. I hate coffee. But if I don’t drink it, I get coffee FOMO. I lost count of how many times I quit drinking coffee, then went back to it. I should give up on quitting coffee, but it’s hard not to. I love it early in the day, but by noon, when my stomach goes sour, I wish I never drank it. By the following morning, I forget and start the cycle all over again. This can go on for years. I thought maybe if I just add Pepcid and Tums, that I could get away with it. But Pepcid and Tums don’t work, at least not for me, so I quit those, too.
Tea. Makes me irritable, gives me hang nails.
Oh! Almost forgot. I quit taking Montelukast for my allergies/asthma (undiagnosed, but not lung cancer, which I originally thought when they found a spot on my lung one time when my wife, Penny, was out of town. I was sure it wasn’t a heart problem, because I walked Mazie, the good dog, every day, so therefore it must be lung cancer. I don’t even smoke. To make things right with the world, I recorded a farewell video and posted it to YouTube, pissing the hell out of Penny, because even though I didn’t tell her so she wouldn’t worry, my friend Mike, who I’m friends with because he’s Penny’s friend Gretchen’s boyfriend, told Gretchen, then she told Penny, then five minutes later Penny calls and says “what the hell?!?” in a contemptuous, “Louis, you’re an idiot and cruel” kind of way. Anyway, it turned out NOT to be lung cancer, so yay) yesterday, at the direction of my allergy doctor, who said that Montelukast is a black box drug, which I had to look up to learn that you shouldn’t take black box drugs if you can at all help it. I decided to give up Flonase and Zyrtec, too, which is why my eyes hurt today.
Graphic design and production. Because of Andy. And Bob. Prima donna art directors.
Keynote speaking. I can’t solve your big, expensive problem, or maybe I just don’t want to. And what sort of value do I bring to the customer. Who cares? So I quit and became a storyteller, purely for the sake of the story, which is where I’m at now.
Oh yeah, I quit being an IT guy. Sold the business in what’s surely the biggest miracle in the history of selling a business. Why would anyone want my business?
Got a job at the credit union. Didn’t quit that. Got separated. For telling stories.
Standup comedy, temporarily. I’ve kind of merged it into storytelling.
I’m sure there’s more, but you get the idea. I’m a Quitter™. It’s my Obvious Advantage™.
And I’m thinking, once I get my 10,000 subscribers by July 23 and launch my 50-state storytelling tour, with a Grand Finale performance of my one-man show, A NIGHT YOU WON’T REMEMBER — AND NOT BECAUSE YOU CAN’T, to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden, what better story topic than NONE DARE CALL IT QUITTING? ChatGPT thinks it’s commercially viable, and I agree.
Not only that. My entire career can center around the theme of quitting. I’ll go from town to town, inspiring Quitters™ everywhere I go. I’ll keep going till I get sick of touring, and then one last final tour: THIS IS IT. I QUIT.
This thing’s got legs.
