I’ve been seeing this all over lately (not just from band kids; don’t get paranoid), people who are quitting something, or someone, and I’ve been thinking about why people quit and whether or not they should, and what leads to it, and whether they’re serious when they say they’re going to quit. . .I’m not sure if there seems to be a lot of it going around lately, or whether I’m just noticing it more.

I don’t want to go into lecture mode. I’ve done my share of quitting, and sometimes my reasons have not been the best. I think maybe I’m trying to understand why I’m finding some people’s reasons more legitimate than others by relating them to my own experiences, or maybe I’m becoming aware of mistakes I made both in committing to something I might not be able to stick with, or quitting for the wrong reasons. I just know that when I look at what other people are doing, I don’t want to just decide if it’s right or wrong, I want to know why I think it’s right or wrong, and what I’ve done or learned from doing that makes me feel that way.

A lot of times I think that we’re encouraged to make commitments, or expected to make commitments, and make them to avoid having to think about why we don’t want to. We’re supposed to go to college, get married, have children, buy a house, for example, which means that many people who shouldn’t do these things do them, and end up unhappy and maybe even failing, because they committed to something they probably knew deep down was not really what they wanted. Worse, by the time they realize that it’s never going to work out, their desire to quit is made even more complicated by the fact that other people are involved, and the negative impact quitting would have on them is just as important a consideration as is the negative impact of continuing on the person who is unhappy. I know that my feelings on these type of commitments is colored by my own experience, as well as by watching the experiences of those around me, so if I say something here that sounds judgmental or absolutist, that’s unintentional. I’m just trying to figure out the whys and wherefores.

I think we should encourage people to make commitments, to try sticking things out enough to really give them a chance, but the things that should be committed to shouldn’t be a generic laundry list for everyone. When things aren’t working out, or have reached a particularly difficult point, we all find that we have a strong desire to quit, and very often a reasonable sounding opportunity presents itself. We have a fight with someone, or a better opportunity comes up, or another commitment takes precedence. . .however, sometimes we have to make them up in order to get out of whatever it is that we no longer wish to be a part of. I know I’ve done that, and I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t at least once or twice taken offense where none was intended to precipitate that fight, or cultivated that other opportunity well before quitting, or shifted our priorities around to make it seem like our commitments were in conflict. Even though I’ve done this, I’ve tried to teach my daughters to stick with things at least until they have had a chance to weather the rough times and see if their desire to quit is only situational. We’ve put reasonable time limits – you have to do this for a year, or for a season (as in band, or a team sport, or anything that requires a consistent and predictable number of people for success – and lasts for less than a year for all practical purposes) and then if you don’t like it, you can quit. Just try performing in a recital once to see if you like it. Do one competition and then decide if you want to compete or not. Stick it out until the teacher/coach/team leader can find a replacement. The idea is that there is a culmination or an end goal, and that once you’ve gone through the full cycle and reached that finale, you have a taste of the commitment from beginning to end and can make a more informed decision about whether or not to quit.

Those kind of commitments, though, seem to be connected more with our young lives. Once we get older, we’re supposed to pick something and then do it forever. The type of experience we have during our school years in no way prepares us for that. We can do something in Middle School for a year, or two, or three. We can do something in High School for a year or four and move on – and we can make a four year commitment that obligates us only once or twice a week for nine months out of each year! College gives us opportunities galore to get our feet wet and then move on without finishing what we started. No matter how well we’ve learned to follow through, we’ve still got so many chances to try something for just a bit and drop it if we don’t want to do it anymore that the lesson can easily fall by the wayside. And then we’re supposed to pick a major that will prepare us for the job we will do for the rest of our lives. Then we’re supposed to get a job – and even if we don’t stay with the same company, we’re supposed to plan a career path that takes us upward and keeps us employed in a particular area until we’re allowed to retire. And we’re supposed to pick someone to stay with for the rest of our lives (thankfully, this one does frequently work, but it would work more often if some of the pressure eased up) and have children and raise them to do the exact same thing (also something that would work better if more personal choice were respected.) I don’t think anyone needs to be reminded about what happens when people cave to the expectation that they possess certain things like houses and cars when the reality is that they should wait or not get those things in the first place. All these “adult” commitments carry a hefty burden and can have a load of negative repercussions for quitting – or failing – and sometimes the best way to avoid quitting is to avoid committing in the first place.

Now that I’m mulling it over, I’m starting to see that we need more opportunities for short term commitments, and more opportunities to make longer but still limited commitments, because we can’t possibly know what they might entail when they make the jump from a year or a season to a lifetime. It’s easy to think something will be great when you first start, but not realize what might change over time, whether it’s the situation or your attitude or your abilities to keep up. Somewhere there’s a line, though, because we learn important things when we stick things out through rough times. We need to be able to make commitments for limited times and complete our obligations, because we need to know how to put up with difficulties and work through them. We need opportunities to make different kinds of commitments so we can learn what is really important to us – is the end result worth the hassles in the middle? Is it worth it enough to keep doing it, or to do the same thing with different people, or do something similar in a different area? We can’t possibly know whether or not we want to do something for a long term unless we’ve had the chance to try it out on a smaller scale.

What I can’t put my finger on, though, is where those changes should be made. Certainly, some people have taken the reins in this by no longer expecting to get a job and stay with the company until they retire (even if that all started because corporations were treating people as expendable!) or by spreading out their education or changing schools and majors as they learn more about themselves. And I think, just as certainly, that some commitments cannot be shortened – children, for example, are not a commitment that has an expiration date. Somewhere, though, there has to be more compromise. Perhaps it’s because I’m older that I don’t think it’s unreasonable to stick out a school year. That period of time is a much smaller segment of my life than it was when I was a quarter of the age I am now. And certainly because I’m older I think that some ages are too young to insist on a lifetime future commitment. However, the more I talk to myself here the more I realize that there are many occasions when it would have been better to say up front “I’m going to try this for X number of years and then decide if I want to continue” than to realize I was in over my head, or didn’t like it as much as I thought I would, or find I’d bitten off more than I could chew and then had to quit, leaving people in the lurch.

I know that I’ve learned a lot from sticking with things even when I was dissatisfied or unhappy. Maybe, though, I would have been less dissatisfied or unhappy if I had set limitations in the first place? I do know that I’ve learned that I prefer honesty to excuses, negotiating to complaining, and confrontation to stewing in anger, and after writing this, I’m thinking those things need to be front-end-loaded rather than brought out when I’m starting to think of quitting. Sometimes I’ve ended up not quitting when I’ve been honest, negotiated, and confronted (but not aggressively, of course!) and the problems were cleared up.

I guess, then, that I’ve been talking to myself here, rather than anyone whose talk of quitting got me to thinking in the first place. Commitments need to be fixed in scope and time period. Commitments need to be adhered to within that scope and time period. Dissatisfaction or unhappiness do not negate the commitment, and those feelings need to be conveyed to the relevant people associated with the commitment so that problems and conflicts can be resolved. Decisions about future commitments need to be considered based on previous experiences, and limitations about the scope and time period need to be set in advance, both for the initial and any future commitments. And if, despite all that, I want to quit, I won’t make excuses or lie about my reasons, even if I have to parse them in such a way that feelings are spared. If I do, I’m doing no good to myself or anyone else. So perhaps the person I needed to lecture about quitting was myself. . .

Over the past several months, there have been a number of things that have gotten me thinking about roleplaying. Not just the kind you do in games, or on stage, but all the different ways we pretend to be someone other than ourselves, why we do it, and which kinds are OK and which ones are not.

I’m going to be very brief here, because this piece about how it relates to my own life needs a post of its own. I grew up with constant reminders from my parents and teachers about how I was a disappointment in so many ways. I spent a lot of time trying to please adults by doing what was expected of me, despite the almost constant evidence that it was wasted effort – I always fell short of expectations no matter how hard I tried. This in itself was roleplaying, obviously, and was the impetus behind my fantasies of becoming an actress or a musician or a famous writer. Not only would I become a person who was well-known, popular, and praised enough to make up for all the criticism, but on top of that, IT WOULD SHOW THEM ALL!!!! Well, I succeeded at these roles as well as I did the ones I was fighting against, but it wasn’t until much later that I realized that the failure was a good thing; it prevented me from having to live my entire life being someone different in order to please others. Roleplaying games and BBS storyboards were a great place for me to pretend without any of the pitfalls of doing it in real life. Sadly, my forgetfulness, inattention to detail, and frivolity were often unwelcome by the people who put much more thought and effort into creating and continuing the stories. I no longer resent the people who criticized me (or booted me out) because I now understand how irritating it can be when you work really hard on something and even one person treats it as something far too trivial. It was fun while it lasted, though.

Again, there’s far more to tell, but I wanted to just touch on a couple of things so that people reading this know that roleplaying has been a big part of my life, both good and bad. Being the type of person who obsessively wants to know everything about something that interests her, I’ve researched and collected information over the years whenever I observed or experienced it as a psychological phenomenon, or watched as the playing of a role directly caused some kind of consequence. As a person who has availed herself of psychological care, I’ve delved quite a lot into the issue as a whole. Understanding it in myself has made me quite sensitive to detecting and observing it in others. And that’s where this blog post actually begins. . .

Roleplaying of all sorts used to require quite a commitment. Communications with others were primarily face-to-face. You needed to pay close attention to what you said and to whom so you could remember to keep your persona (and all your other lies) consistent. It was not something you did for fun as much as something you did to protect or improve your social standing or career. Serious business, indeed. I think pretty much everyone had to do it to some degree just to conform to current behavioral rules, but in that way, they had been taught how. It wasn’t a choice, just something done by rote.

In my lifetime alone, communication methods and speeds and geographical availability have changed dramatically. It was only about 25 years ago that personal computers and modems gave people one of the most ingenious ways to roleplay – the Bulletin Board system. It started from the moment you logged on. The first thing you did was choose a handle, and from there you could be whoever you wanted (within limits). Nobody saw your face or heard your voice, they knew you by your writing alone. Unless you decided to get together. This actually happened quite a bit, since most people called BBSes that were within their free local calling area. Sometimes the person and the persona were quite alike, but sometimes one was clearly better company than the other.

Still, though, being able to pretend like this didn’t eliminate the real-life version. Girls still would change the way they acted or the friends they associated with in order to get a relationship or social connection they thought they wanted. Guys would still outright lie to these girls to get what they wanted, and lie to one another for all kinds of guy reasons (some of which still make absolutely no sense to me!) Anyone who wanted something badly enough was far more willing to say or do things they normally wouldn’t rather than put thought into whether or not they really wanted it or why. I would guess that this has been going on throughout human existence, and will doubtless continue until its end, even though it has caused unhappiness almost exclusively.

Now we’re up to today. The opportunities to roleplay in cyberspace are almost limitless. Anyone can have a blog, post to forums or comment on other peoples’ blogs, and the number of social networking sites is mind-boggling. It’s not surprising that people choose to let themselves be someone else online, but often when I know someone both IRL and online, the difference between the two can elicit some pretty potent emotions. I admit – the person I am online is different from the person I am, but not in any premeditated or deliberate roleplaying way. I feel much freer to release the snark on someone whom I feel truly deserves it, but to hear me debate with someone face to face on something we view oppositely, you might never guess I had an ounce of vitriol in my body. I spend a lot more time thinking, researching, editing, and composing what I write, but offline my mouth is sometimes not even remotely connected to my brain. Overall, though, what you see is what you get.

I still understand the appeal of creating an alternate persona, but what confounds me is when the online persona maintains itself even when communicating with people who know them in person. Despite the fact that everyone knows how easy it is to be misinterpreted, despite the lack of urgency to post the moment you’re done writing, and regardless of the potential that other real-life people might be affected as well, people write things as their online persona without pausing to consider the repercussions it will cause in their real lives. Even if your persona is dealing with people who are not part of your real life, interacting with others in a way that suggests that you might meet in person, or that causes an emotional attachment that would interfere with or damage real-life relationships for the other party never seems to be considered. Plus, while any competent computer user could track someone down and find who he or she is on multiple online locations, roleplayers frequently link to themselves, even if each of their online selves are different from one another. I’m not saying that people who experiment with alternate roles online should be castigated or abhorred for doing it, just that they should remember that behind every other persona is a person, and that sometimes deception is not just good, clean fun.

What happens, then, is that all the normal roleplaying we do in real life, which already has the potential to make us unhappy, isn’t fixed when we go someplace else and pretend to be who we want to be to make up for it. Worse than the harm it might do to others, it is also a way of inflicting harm upon yourself. Consider how the comparison between your pretend life and your real life affects you. Most likely, you won’t want to pretend to be someone who is less appealing in any way. Your persona will be smarter, more attractive, wealthier, better traveled, and so on. In this way, you have created entirely new ways to not measure up. However badly the criticism from others has convinced you that you are unworthy of one thing or another, pretending to be the fabulous creature you always wanted to be and then having to face your less-stellar life only gives you more reason to find yourself wanting. You’ve given yourself an unattainable goal that will insure that everything you could ever possibly accomplish will be a failure by comparison.

Maybe at some later time, I’ll address one or more of the many incidents and experiences that cumulatively gave me so much to think about. Maybe I won’t. This is long enough as it is, and I still have other viewpoints on the same issue that will be just as wordy, and still encompass the whole idea. I might not even remember many of them by the time I’m done, and that will probably be a good thing. For now, if you’ve made it this far, thank you for indulging me.