The Truth About Quitting

This picture has nothing to do with this post. 

I've been working on crocheting baby blankets for a friend who is adopting a little boy from the other side of the world and I'm trying to decide if the yarn pictured is just too hideous to do anything with?? I've tried like five different stitches. Thoughts..?? PS How cute is Violet..?? All the heart eyessss....

Anyways.

On to the REAL post...

So, I'm writing for an album, right?

I've been writing for over a year now. That's longer than I've ever written for any single project.

A plan was set in motion LAST SPRING for this album to be written and recorded by the fall of 2016, and then for it to be released THIS spring...like...this month, actually.

And yet - I'm still writing for it.

Still. Writing.

I've had SO many ideas, you guys...so many demos, so many parts of songs come and go...written and then scrapped...this album has felt impossible to complete. The criticism I hear in my own mind has been deafening.

I want to quit.

Even just typing that out seems so crazy to me. Quit?? Really?? Quit what I LOVE? What I've felt so CALLED to do?? (...even though it doesn't pay well [haha - difficult truth], even when it requires more of me and my heart and my time than I feel like I can give...even when it forces me to stare into the ugly face of my feelings of inadequacy...I've felt called.)

But...yeah. Even acknowledging that feeling of being called...I've wanted to quit.

Quitting would be easier, you know? At least initially.

It would be easier to look at this whole experience and say - "I had a good run. God wanted me to be there, doing that, at that time...but now it's time to move on and do something else." That would be easier than coming back again and again for more frustration and insecurity. That would be easier than taking good, long, hard looks at myself and trying to dissect WHY the music isn't flowing the way it has in the past. Quitting would give me an easy out right now.

Have you ever felt like that? Like whatever project or goal or dream you have is so difficult, it's so frustrating and irritating and confusing...that it requires so much of you/your time/your energy...that there isn't enough promise of success to justify all of the work...that you just want to throw in the towel and just...QUIT?

Quitting would definitely be easier now.

You know when it wouldn't be easier..?

In six months from now. A year. Five years.

I know I'd look back and wonder.

I'd wonder what would have happened if I had just stuck it out. If I had truly waited on the Lord...just a little longer, you know?

I'd wonder if I had truly given everything to the task. I'd wonder if I had done everything I could have...written with everyone I could have. Tried all of the techniques I could have, set aside more time than I did, prayed harder, fasted more sincerely. I'd wonder if I made everything about ME too much...and not enough about HIM.

Listen. If you're wondering if you should give up...maybe don't..? If you think you'd look back in six months, a year, five years...and wonder...keep trying.

We're all failures. Every single one of us. Failure isn't the opposite of success, it's a part of it. We fail until we don't. And then - after we've achieved what we set out to - we set a new goal and begin the process of failure all over again. That's life. That's how it works. That's how it's meant to work, because that's how we grow.

I feel like I'm writing this blog because it's what I NEED to hear right now haha, so welcome to my brain and the way I talk to myself.

I need to believe this. I need to embrace it.

I'm not quitting...yet. Not tonight, at least.

Maybe I'm supposed to be learning something through all of this trial and error...all of this frustrating failure...all of this painful and humbling learning. To let go of my ego more? To ask for help? To ask more fervently and listen more ardently? Who knows. I don't. At least not right now.

In any case, I'm not quitting.

Let's not quit together, ok?

xo.