You Don’t Need to Finish a Damn Thing
As long as you’ve learned from an experience, you can move on
“You’re not going anywhere until you’ve finished your meal!”
I remember being a child and having to remain at the dinner table long after everybody else had left. I wasn’t hungry, but I wasn’t free to leave until I’d finished my meal. Those memories have ingrained in the adult me a compulsion to continue eating even when full.
Being forced to finish what you’ve started creates unhealthy relationships with food. But what about the other relationships it impacts? …
I’ve done a lot of different things in my life so far. I’ve been an English academic, a writer, a health care professional, an endurance runner, a coach, a bartender, a cold-caller, and a game designer. If I tell you that I’m an entrepreneur, then this serial focus on different fields of work makes sense. Entrepreneurs are supposed to fail — repeatedly — until they find that thing that will propel them into the stratosphere of success.
But if I describe myself as an employee, rather than an entrepreneur, then that list becomes a series of questions. Why didn’t I persist with academia? What made me give up bartending? Was I ever serious about any of it?
