The Art of Quitting

The Art of Quitting

By HAROON YOUNAS

I quit the day I stopped lying to myself.

It was a Tuesday—gray, indecisive weather, the kind that doesn’t know whether to rain or clear. I sat in the corner booth of Café Duvet, sipping lukewarm coffee and staring at a laptop screen I hadn't typed anything meaningful into in over three hours. The blinking cursor mocked me.

I was supposed to be writing the final act of my first novel. My editor wanted a draft in three weeks. My bank account wanted it sooner.

But I was done. Not just with the book. With trying to be a novelist.

I had chased this dream for seven years—seven long, uneven, debt-riddled years. I’d worked as a barista, a tutor, a night security guard, and once as a substitute mascot at a minor league baseball game—all to support the idea that one day, I’d "make it."

Some people tell you quitting is weakness. That it’s giving up. That the world belongs to the persistent. Maybe they’re right. But there’s a difference between persistence and punishment. And I had confused the two for a very long time.

You see, there’s a kind of romance to struggle. The starving artist. The late bloomer. The underdog who never gives up and finally, finally wins.

That fantasy nearly wrecked me.

I stayed in relationships longer than I should have. I clung to friendships that drained me. I wrote stories I didn’t believe in because I thought that's what readers wanted. I wore my exhaustion like a badge of honor. I told myself every “no” was just one step closer to “yes.”

Until I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I felt joy while writing.

That Tuesday in Café Duvet, I closed my laptop, took one last sip of my cold coffee, and left without saying goodbye to the barista who always gave me extra whipped cream. I walked twelve blocks to the park, sat on a bench, and cried.

I cried for the years spent chasing something that no longer fed me. I cried for the version of me who once believed so fiercely in the power of words. I cried because I had no idea what came next.

But underneath the sadness, there was a quiet sense of relief.

Giving up didn’t feel like failure. It felt like freedom.

Later that week, I called my sister. She was the practical one, the accountant, the spreadsheet queen who always had her life color-coded and future-planned.

“I quit,” I said.

A pause. “Good.”

I blinked. “Wait, what?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to say that for two years.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you had to figure it out for yourself.”

Quitting isn’t just walking away. It’s choosing yourself over the version of you that exists only to please others, prove something, or maintain an illusion.

I didn’t stop being a writer. I just stopped trying to make it my everything. I started painting. I taught creative writing at a community center on Wednesdays. I worked part-time at a bookstore, which gave me more joy than any book launch I’d ever done.

One night, a student in my class stayed behind.

“Is it okay to stop trying?” she asked. “Like… if something you loved now feels heavy?”

I nodded. “Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is quit the thing that’s crushing you.”

She exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for months.

We don’t talk enough about that kind of courage—the quiet bravery of surrender. We glorify resilience, but never retreat. We teach kids to fight for their dreams, but not how to recognize when a dream has changed, or when it's no longer their own.

The art of quitting is not defeat.

It is discernment.

It is the soft but powerful statement: I am allowed to choose again.

I still write. But I also laugh more. I go on walks without turning them into metaphor. I sleep eight hours. I’ve fallen in love—with someone who sees me, not just my ambition. And when people ask if I’m still a novelist, I say, “Not right now. Maybe not ever again.”

And I mean it.

Without apology.

Without shame.

Because sometimes, quitting isn’t the end of the story.

It’s the first honest sentence you write.