Quitting time -a quitter’s raga

Every now and then the compulsive urge to try something new manifests itself in me taking on a new activity. Luckily, my desire to try out the new is equally matched by my ability to quickly see the errors of my ways and to stop the pointless pursuit of unrealized mastery of the new activity. I had shown a keen interest in music as I entered my teens and following in the Britton family tradition my parents thought I should learn a musical instrument. Having studiously ignored the piano sitting in the living room, they kindly bought me a guitar for Christmas and armed me with Bert Wheedon’s “Play in a Day”. I duly practiced “Bobby Shaftoe” solidly for about 4 days until, with my Trumpian-short fingers struggling with the steel strings of the two chords, I decided that maybe guitar was not for me. I spent more time electrifying the guitar with a small mike attached to the body and recording my echoey guitar effects on my reel-to-reel than I ever spent playing songs.

My only other musical venture was singing, we sang hymns every morning at school assembly and whenever we went on the bus to an away sports match to play another school I was one of the ring leaders of the back of the bus impromptu choir treating the compliment of the 3 or 4 teams to our cheery terpsichorean efforts. The songbook at that time included childhood favorites like “3 Wheels on My Wagon”, “Do Re Mi”, “My Old Man’s a Dustman” the inspirational “Jerusalem” and “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and the classics from our parents like “New York, New York”, “Chicago”. As we got more into music we added “Feel like I’m Fixing To Die Rag” from Woodstock, “The Boxer”, “Pinball Wizard”, and some Beatles – “Rocky Raccoon” and “Back in the USSR”. I kept some of those into my rugby playing days, adding ‘actions’ to the Swing Low and Jerusalem songs, picking up some new and far more tasteless ditties along the way. Into our late twenties, we serenaded packed pubs on our cricket tours with many of the same songs. (If you would like to hear what those songs were supposed to sound like, listen here). My only formal effort at singing was I joined the choir for Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, which was fun but not something I was going to find a lot of time for in a busy teenager’s life. 

I am sure on hindsight that joining the choir was more an ironic act than a genuine desire to improve my singing. In the same vein, one day when we were signing up for the local East Somerset sports tournament we all thought it would be hilarious to enter the 3000-Meter Walk. When the final entries were registered it turned out that as much as the hilarity at the time was communal I was the only one who had actually registered, so alongside my modest efforts with the discus I now had to learn to speed walk. I duly practiced walking in large circles and on the day I triumphed in a field of 4 and qualified for the County sports event, something my discus throwing did not qualify me for. At the County Event I scraped second and went on to the Regional Championships, which was getting embarrassing as the other athletes at this point were serious, focused and making an effort whereas I was not. In the Regionals I came a respectable 3rd out of 8, but that was the end of the line for my speed walking and the peak of my athletic career.

Over the years, I have tried my hand at various other sports out of curiosity or a desire for some fitness. Games with balls and rackets, tennis, badminton, ping pong, squash and the far inferior racquetball. Rolling ball games like boules, bowling, both Crown Green and 10 pin. Couple of efforts at the martial sports, boxing and judo. Team sports like football or rugby, cricket, field hockey, basketball (although years of playing rugby created habits of movement that proved bruising to my lunchtime pick-up compatriots) and Ultimate Frisbee. I have studiously avoided golf as I have neither the patience nor the desire to dedicate the time necessary to get any good at it, and the peripheral displays of male conformity and snobbery interwoven into the game alienated me from the get -go. I have held positions where it was obligatory for me to play, and I would happily hack around as part of a fun best-ball game, however on one occasion I was paired up in a four that was teeing off early in the draw and I had to take my tee shot in front of the gathered group of senior Japanese customers and serious American golfing colleagues. I was dressed correctly to look the part, but I gamely completely whiffed twice before shanking the top of the ball, for it to roll slowly and drunkenly down the side of the tee box. Before it got any worse, one of my Japanese colleagues smartly moved me to a different group at the back and spared everyone further embarrassment at my flailing efforts to kill the ball with a #1 wood.

I tried yoga while dating a yoga-loving Californian, but if ever there was an activity that smacked of temporary suspension of disbelief under the guise of a foreign and superficially spiritual activity, yoga was the poster child. I gamely accompanied her to her fave Sunday class in SOMA, only to be disdainfully rejected for not having the necessary experience for a class of this level. I think the guy could see that I would probably fart and would most definitely laugh and kill the serious vibe they were after. So my yoga career fell to the mat and never sprung back.

Another equally serious and ultimately annoying sports activity is skate skiing. It’s a revenge sport for the skinny and the short who were bullied in main stream team sports. The physics of the skis work against weight and height as they come in a basic size and surface area, the smaller and lighter you are the coefficient of friction is in your favor. If you are not, the ski is harder to move while propelling yourself on the flats and up hill, and insufficient to give you much control in the odd moments of relief down hill. It’s basically an unpleasant way to run fast in freezing cold weather with sticks on your feet.

One of the benefits of maturity is gaining a modicum of knowing one’s self, the self actualization process, knowing more accurately one’s own strengths and weaknesses. Logic then would suggest that we focus more on the things we can do well and enjoy, rather than persevering with those things that we ultimately will struggle with. The problem is that life throws challenges at us, especially in the work environment where it is harder to admit that we suck at something, especially if the thing we suck at is part and parcel of the job. I have spent a lot of time in customer facing environments, I have headed sales organizations yet the one thing I am terrible at is the networking gathering, the mixer, the early evening conference cocktail party, the schmoozing free-for-all amongst a large gathering of people. The goal of these events is to meet new contacts, introducing yourself, making polite small talk, sipping your drink politely cradled, as it always is, in a small paper napkin. Firstly, I have been doing what I do for such a long time, I struggle to get intrinsically excited about any industry event, it’s slightly more interesting than reading the minutes of the Chinese Politburo Central committee report on rice production but less interesting than watching reruns of the Simpsons. Secondly, I am just not that extraverted, I’m happy to wallflower or talk to the 3 people in the room who I know quite well rather than make the effort with the 297 I do not. I sit at lunches where it’s free seating and as much as I am French enough now to always say hello individually to everyone at the table, I marvel at the easy way some guys lean in, introduce themselves and chat as if they have known each other for years. With aging eyes I struggle to make out the name of the person on the name card, let alone the company name, so I am not going out on a social limb to introduce myself to someone who it may turn out is a vendor selling ‘insurance solutions’ or yet more software. I usually quietly eat my lunch and move on, same with the ‘cocktail events’, I meander around, drink one beer and desperately find someone I know or give in, and take my ball home.

Knowing when to quit is a learned skill, one I think I have mastered.