Quitters Never Win and Winners Never Quit

When I was a kid, I had a pretty short attention span. I had plenty of interests but when the work got too tough, I would quit and move on to the next interest. In 2^nd grade, I joined the Brownies because my sister was a Girl Scout and I loved her troop leader. My troop leader wasn’t as nice as Cat’s so I quit. In 5^th grade, I joined a little league baseball team. The first time I got hit with a ball, I quit. In 6^th grade, I joined the band and played the flute. I loved it and was pretty good at it, but the following year, we started marching, and I stunk. That was the end of the band. In the 7^th grade, I was placed in an advanced math class, but by 8^th grade, I was afraid it would be too hard, so I went back to the regular math classes. In 9^th grade, I ran track because I was dying to have a letterman’s jacket. As soon as I earned the jacket, I quit the team.

By the time I graduated high school, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an actress, but deep down, I knew that was just a silly fantasy that would never pan out. Shortly after graduation, I met my first boyfriend. He was attending the local college, so I decided to give it a try too. I’m no genius, and never claimed to be one. I hadn’t even taken my SATs, so I had to hurry up and take them in November so I could start college the following January. When I started going to college, I fell in love with the structure and routine. It was like someone had flipped a switch inside of me, and I vowed right then and there that no matter how tough things got, I would stick with it and finish. I didn’t want to add college to my quit list. Thankfully, I did stick with it. I added a busy class-packed minor to my course load late in my college career, so I took 5 years to finish, but I had a blast.

I couldn’t find a job in my field, so I started working at OfficeMax about 5 months after finishing school. I started in customer service and over the years, worked my way up through the ranks. In 2003, my dream position became available so I applied and I got it. I’ve been in the same position ever since. I won’t lie – in the 16 years I’ve been with the company, I’ve had a lot of ups and downs and believe me, I’ve been tempted to quit a few times. I actually did quit for 2 weeks in 1999 to work in an “elite private school” that turned out to be a glorified daycare center, so I quickly got my old job with OfficeMax back LOL. Other than that, I’ve stuck with it through the highs and lows.

Three and a half years ago, if anyone had told me that I would be facing a life-threatening illness, I wouldn’t have believed it or thought that I would be able to handle it. When I started getting one bad medical report after another, I was scared and overwhelmed. I wanted to cover my ears and just run away, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I had two choices: stand up and fight against it, or quit and die. So I chose to fight. Last week in chemo, I sat next to a patient that could barely move because she was in so much pain. But she uttered these words as she struggled to get up to go to the bathroom: “Quitters never win and winners never quit…” I had just gotten some really crappy news and was already fighting back tears, but to hear this very sickly woman say these words made my heart swell up and feel so encouraged. She’s right. You have to keep on pushing, even if it’s just to get up to go pee!