Quit

For the past few weeks, my testes have been glued to the proverbial wall. It's been a constant flow of milestones and deadlines, one pushed up after the other. And with them, a steady stream of problems. I've been robbed, seen work destroyed by random mechanical failures, followed by my entire operating system. I've fallen ill.  And, worst of all, seen work destroyed not by the random disconnection of a power cable, but the wilful incompetence of others.

The temptation, particularly after the latter incident, has been to quit. Why should I suffer for the idiocy of others, after all? I've been sleeping little, eating sporadically, and alternately stressed or depressed. And, besides, the aforementioned incompetence is the easy out of my contract, should I need it. Justifying my current stint as an editor with all that has been hard, but the truth is, I'm not a quitter.

That's a big deal.  Because I really mean it. My patience has never been pushed this far beyond its limit. I've been told multiple times to just quit while I'm ahead; before it all comes crashing down. And while I've flirted with the idea, my response every time has been, "No." It hasn't been a defiant no, but a simple, matter-of-factly one, as though the statement isn't registering and therefore isn't receiving the appropriate response. And those few times I've flirted with it, I've felt the same. Just, "No." Not accompanied by triumphant ideas of finishing what you've started and not being a goram, dirty quitter, but the plain, hollow tone of resoluteness, of preferring to get back to work instead of dwelling on it. I don't know why, but I just have this need to continue.

To be honest, I've been quite surprised by that. I've said that I'm not a quitter before, but I never really knew it, and we all believe that about ourselves until we're actually tested. That I've been refusing to quit without feeling the need to justify it says something about me, regardless of whether a constant refusal to quit is necessarily a good thing.

In the end, with all that blood pressure in tow, this whole affair has been enough to show me that I have not yet reached the edge. (Never mind that one time I did.) That's something. And that's all for now. Back to work.

End.