The Art Of The Irish Goodbye

Last month, I threw in the towel on a writing gig I’d had since 2011. I calculated that I’d filed over 400 pieces and written at least 240,000 words. I was tapped. The subject matter had ceased to be interesting to me. The pay had once been lucrative, but numerous structural changes to the compensation plan over the years meant that I was, in the final months, earning less than a fifth of what I had been pulling in during my salad days. While the time I devoted to this work was never so great that prevented me from loading myself down with day jobs and client assignments at the same time, it was enough to keep me from doing other writing that better aligned with what I truly wanted to say and from art and baking and a host of creative pursuits requiring more focus than I could spare. I justified this because there was a certain cachet to this byline and it was a dependable pay check.

The phrase “Irish goodbye” describes when you just slip out of an event without letting people know. I am a pro at disappearing like this in a social context, but I struggle when it comes to work and personal relationships. I’ve toughed out jobs long after the bulk of other team members have moved on. I’ve let friendships spool out long past the time when the other person and I have grown in different directions. I would die before allowing myself to overstay my welcome as a party guest, but I’ll lurk around until they turn on the house lights at ill-fitting workplaces or in bad dynamics. I convince myself that things aren’t that bad or that they’re bad all over or I just get so caught up in grinding along that I just push all of the red flags out of mind. Then, inevitably, seemingly out of the blue to anyone from whom I have been careful to hide my unhappiness, I snap and bolt for the exit. Rarely, if ever, do I look back.

All this to say, I should probably have thrown in the towel a couple of years ago, but the fact that I threw in the towel at all and did so gracefully is progress of a sort.