It’s okay to quit
Some people say we need 10000 hours to master something.
I believe that we need to spend a lot of time learning what we want to achieve, but the most important thing is the motivation.
Back in the days, I was an artist or a pseudo-artist. I was making music and organising events. I was truly passionate about music. But when I started living the music as a business I started hating it.
In that point, I hated the word quit because the society teaches us that quitting is a bad thing.
Four about three years I struggled with this word. Every time I was saying to a friend that I didn’t want to be in the music industry anymore I had to listen to the same advice: “you always wanted this, you can’t quit”.
I started changing my words. And instead of quit, I started saying I would prefer to make music as a hobby even though I had to listen to people saying that I was giving up.
For about three years I lived a dilemma. I started doubting myself. Maybe I was scared. All my life I fought for this, and now that I’m here I want to leave? Perhaps it was a phase. But this period kept going on. I never found the same happiness in the music industry.
I decided to accept. Yes, I am quitting. Yes, I want to do others things. I want to travel. I want to work in other industry. It doesn’t matter if people think that I’m a quitter. It’s my life.
I decided to follow other passions. Building websites. I built my portfolio, and on the first job that I applied, I got the offer.
I was truly focused on learning. I did free projects to friends besides my job. I started my own brand Miuki Miu. I had some clients. I end up working for an excellent company in Portugal. And after some time I had a superb job offer in Dublin. I decided to take the risk.
After that, I did things that I could never imagine I could achieve:
- Living abroad
- Doing a presentation on Google I/O Dublin
- Being part of an hackathon representing Woman Who Code Dublin
- Talking on Codepen Dublin at Bank of Ireland
- Talking on DublinJS at Intercom
I see that leave something behind is not easy. I see people scared of quitting. Is it bad? I believe that the scariest thing is to start all over again. And few of us have this courage to spend time learning something new. We always think that we are old enough to start something and deal with the possibility of failure.
Believe me. To quit something that doesn’t make you happy anymore is okay. Even if all your life you projected a dream.
I believe that things only work if we do with our hearts. If I remained in the music industry without my heart, it wouldn’t work. If I continue on the web with my soul, it will work.
I’m not afraid of quitting and start again. I’m only happy doing what I like. And you, are you happy?
