Binderama60for60

By now, ten days into 2026, I have quit on my New Year’s resolution. Truth be told: I didn’t have one. Haven’t for years. But if I did, it would so be toast by now.

It was a year ago today that I left my last job, likely the last full-time job I’ll ever have.

I still have dreams about the place, some quite frothy and fun; the agency was big on parties and retreats. There are plenty of familiar faces in the dreams. Some episodes, though, are more disturbing and enigmatic: trying to get into or out of the building, searching for my car in a massive shopping-mall-sized lot, trying to get home before dark on a 16-lane slot-car track winding through the foothills, hustling to catch a connecting train in Grand Central. That last one usually involves scrambling into the top bunk bed where the platform is supposed to be, but never the train.

Dream readers and symbologists, have at it.

Wait, where was I?

Oh right, I’m a quitter.

I quit the Cub Scouts before I became a Webelo. It just wasn’t for me. My Brother Mike went on to become an Eagle Scout. Good on him.

My Mom made me show up to the 5th grade school science fair and explain to my teacher why I was pulling out at the last minute. I’d made some nifty papier-mâché planets, but I had no clue what Einstein’s “curvature of spacetime” theory was about. Mike tried to give me a crash course the night before, but, well, that stuff is complicated.

When I skipped a soccer practice in favor of going to a school dance (a well-journaled source of misery), my Dad chided me for wanting to be a “little dancing man.” Pretty sure that was the end of that. My oldest Brother Tim thought that was funny as hell and quoted it for years.

My days playing the trombone were always numbered, but it took me four years to finally call it quits, after 7th grade. Never liked it. My Brother Mike was actually heavily recruited out of middle school to play trombone in the high school band. He passed. Then again, he did become an Eagle Scout. (I did not see this blog going here. Mike will get his day in February, including a trombone story involving a guinea pig.)

I quit my paper route for The Washington Post when I realized that waking up at 3:30AM every morning and heading into the darkness, rain and snow in order to deliver 125 newspapers to people who didn’t want to pay me when I came to collect was futile. That lesson stays with me. Don’t be a sucker, don’t let yourself be disrespected, and don’t get up at 3:30AM, unless you need to catch a flight. Even then, book a later flight.

Late in my junior year in high school, I had pretty much quit. Lots of reasons. I went to the classes I needed to and I was still active in organizations.

I was the editor-in-chief (EIC) of the school newspaper, the Hawk Talk. When I got reprimanded by the principal over a letter to the editor I’d printed, I wanted to quit, in protest. I consulted my Dad, who was a journalist and an EIC. He told me, in effect, “if you quit, you will become irrelevant, you will be out of the conversation. Stay in it and steer it back on track.” Some of my Dad’s best advice.

My capping feat of quitting in high school: I got a D in AP calculus. If anyone wants to question why I quit on calculus, start by explaining to me what the hell it even is. My teacher couldn’t. My Brother Mike probably can, but he knows better than to try.

A Big Quit

I quit my job at Universal in Florida a few decades ago. I was a kid but it was a good gig, with a lot of potential and connections in all the right places.

More than that, I didn’t realize at that age just how good I had it. I’d been damn lucky.

At the time, there were also politics at the company: two factions battling for control. My boss was on the losing side, ultimately. I was on the other, closely aligned with the then-current president (and now CEO emeritus). He told me before I left, “you’ll be back, this is your home.” A few months later, as I floundered in NYC, he told he didn’t have a role for me anymore.

Lesson: loyalty matters. By quitting and turning my back, I had made myself irrelevant. Be prepared.

Quitting people

Regrettably, I’ve also quit some people. A few of them I’ve addressed in this 60|60 series. I won’t drag them down again. But to add a few names, with regrets: Christie, Jennifer, Jenny, Jenna, Jen, Laura and Laurie. In many cases, the quitting was mutual. More often, in my head, it was just me wanting to be me. Yeah, I know.

I’ve also quit some guy friends, at some time or another. If I haven’t addressed those quits in 60|60, they were probably complete tools. Guy Code.

I quit Mary once but I got my act together in short order. Never again.

Quitting places

I’ve lived a transient’s life. Since I quit my hometown of Vienna, Virginia after high school, I’ve never even thought of moving back. When I quit Universal, I quit Orlando. I quit New York for Las Vegas and new opportunities; the right spirit but the wrong destination. I quit Vegas because it would have killed me. I loved Santa Monica but I quit it to move in with Mary up north. We quit NorCal for, well, it was time. We quit Nashville because they raised our rent 20% on the same day our place was flooded with raw sewage.

No more quitting places. For now.

Quitting me

There have been moments. Leave it at that.

Quitting for good

In the plus column of quitting, I quit smoking cigarettes after 27 years and dozens of attempts. If you know a smoker, get them on Chantix. An amazing therapy.

But like with those dreams about my last job, I still dream about lighting up, drawing a full breath of throaty, lung-crusting, gritty goodness. I wake up in a panic, 14 years later. Phew, I’m still clean and unemployed.

As for quitting that last job…

I was grateful to the agency for bringing me on when they did back in 2013. Thanks, Jill. I was no spring chicken.

At the beginning, my goal was to last two years. That’s another Dad-ism: stay with something for at least two years. I lasted eleven. In that time, I learned a lot that kept me relevant in a fast-changing industry. And I want to think I helped to elevate the company’s work, offerings and reputation; I grew accounts and added clients. And I enjoyed my time on the team, especially mentoring the up-and-comers.

Even so, I’d give an audible eye-roll any time the owners said to everyone, “we want this to be the last job you’ll ever have.” Turns out, in my case, they were right. Thanks, Rod and Drew. A lot of memories.

My final two major projects for the agency were successes, in my opinion. One of them was a kick-ass, immersive experience inside the legendary Hall C at Moscone in San Francisco; the other a very high-visibility gig on the main stage at CES in Las Vegas.

The latter project laid me low, though, burned me to a crisp. That’s when I realized I had matured. Or changed. Or cracked. Or grown a pair. Or something. It was time to move on. It was time to quit.

It was The Washington Post all over again.

One morning back in December 2024, I didn’t need an alarm clock to be awake at 3:30 AM. I’d been awake. I was having a sort of Jerry Maguire moment. But rather than publish a manifesto at Kinko’s (clerk: “that’s the way to become great, man, hang your balls out there”), I was at the computer posting a single query on social: “Who has quit their job recently and how did it go?” Instead of a round of pity-applause in the hotel lobby, I awoke to a bunch of replies at dawn. All supportive. Too supportive. Shit! I need to delete this.

The die was cast. I had “entered the portal.” I gave my resignation notice before Christmas and was dismissed a month later, a few days after the CES gig.

Gotta say, I feel fortunate that my last projects were fulfilling for me and successful for the agency and clients. Quitting doesn’t always end that way.

In a matter of days, I started feeling better, sleeping better, being more active and shifting my creative energies to greener pastures. And the dreams started coming.

Am I relevant at that agency these days? Probably not. Because I quit.

But the memories and dreams are still pretty cool.