Over at Bookstack, I occasionally participate in a meme called Booking Through Thursday where each week a bookish type question is posted. This week we were asked whether we had ever “fallen out of love” with a favorite author. While writing my response, I started thinking about “falling out of love” with other things – foods, music, activities, hobbies – a train of thought that was prompted by my experiece last night.
The Valentine’s Day concert at the high school…each year our girl’s choir hosts a Valentine’s Day cabaret style concert, complete with romantic little tables for two strewn with rosebuds, pink punch, and lots of cookies and chocolate desserts. While people sit and munch, the girls perform some songs. Now, it’s all very cute and girly, and they dress up in their best sparkly dresses. But in the 15 years I’ve been accompanying for the choirs, I have to admit it’s my least favorite of anything I do. I think I almost prefer playing in the orchestra pit for musical (and unless you’ve done that, you can’t know how horrible it is.)
Last night was certainly no exception.
The singing was abysmal (sorry to sound like Simon, but I did feel as if I were listening to the auditions of American Idol all over again). The punch was sickeningly sweet (what it really needed was a healthy shot of champagne). The girls were dressed most inappropriately (a young woman standing 5 feet tall and weighing 200 pounds should never wear a v-neck, sleevless, red sequined dress).
I am so over this, I kept thinking last night, as I endured an hour’s worth of this, and then had to repeat the entire performace for a “second sitting” at eight o’clock.
I think I’ve finally fallen out of love with high school music.
Sometimes it can be good to fall out of love with something. I’ve been agonizing for quite some time about whether to keep this high school job. But the more experiences like last night just serve to convince me it’s time to move on.
It seems to be a pattern with me – I have to “do something to death” before I’m able to call it quits, become so heartily sick of it that I can no longer bear it for an instant. Only then can I give it up, toss it aside gratefully as one would an albatross around the neck, breathing a huge sigh of relief.
And then the relinquishing is not so painful, is it?
How about you? Have you fallen out of love with something in your life? How do you handle it?
Becca's Byline 
“I have to “do something to death” before I’m able to call it quits, become so heartily sick of it that I can no longer bear it for an instant.”
Why is that? I’m the same. Once I’m involved, I can’t quit. Maybe that’s it. We don’t wish to be quitters, or perhaps we’re afraid we’ll have regrets once we finally relinquished it.
I’d have to say I’m the same, too. Isn’t that odd? I love how you wrote this post, Becca! Your words are visuals into your thoughts…. I could just see that girl in the red dress and hear the crooning. 🙂
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Smiles,
Michele
I am the same – do something until one day I’ve had enough and just walk away. Or stop doing whatever it is. Then years later, I remember, “Oh, yeah – I used to do that, or eat that, or wear that, or whatever.”
We’ve never exactly been in love with her, but we’re weighing the decision of whether or not to leave the veterinarian we’ve used for the past 12 years through three different dogs. I’m feeling like I’m being very disloyal, but we drive between 15-20 miles to get to her when there is a very well known practice just across the highway about a half mile away from our house. It just seems kind of silly not to go there when so many people recommend it, but it’s hard making the decision to leave the old place. They’ve never really done anything for us to complain about. But, when seconds count in an emergency, I’d rather drive half a mile than more than 15.
A few months ago I walked away from my real estate career. I’m still licensed and may decide to work as an assistant, but when we got back from our last Michigan trip I realized that because of my knee I couldn’t do things the way I wanted to, so I immediately fell out of love with real estate and just decided to stay home until after I have my knee replaced. The change came so quickly it was like someone had thrown a switch. Went to Michigan as a real estate agent and two weeks later, “Who Cares?”
There have actually been a number of things in my life where a keen interest has suddenly dimmed and I just walk away. It also happened to a friend who lived and breathed airplanes for many years. He has now sold all of his airplanes, turned his hanger over to someone else, and seldom even talks about airplanes. They were his life for about 40 years.
I have to say that I don’t know any woman who can just decide that something is not working for her and then just walk away. Maybe we’re hardwired that way. Of course I’m like that myself, but I know when the end is near for me. I find myself making all kinds of excuses as to why I can’t (for instance) sit down at my sewing machine for an afternoon and work on a quilt or whatever. I have to get all of my housework done or I feel guilty. I have to do my grocery shopping and run errands or I feel guilty. I have to be done with all of my chores by a reasonable time or I feel guilty. And then if by some miracle, all of the planets align and everything that I am fretting over is done, I still can’t seem to enjoy myself. Then I know that it’s time to move on to something else.
As to whether I have ever fallen out of love with an author, it’s got to be Stephen King. I read everything he wrote voraciously up to and including The Stand. My personal opinion is that he peaked with that book. I tried reading several other books of his after that, and maybe finished 2 or 3. I just couldn’t seem to push myself through them. It just seemed like alot of gibberish with story lines that were flipping all over the place. I always said that he needed to drop the horror genre and do what he was born to do, just tell stories. Leave the gore out. JMHO
Wow…I can so relate to this post. I see from the comments that it’s a common phenomenon. I have so many examples to add: from people to places to things. I wrote this after returning to a favorite place and finding it gone: “The time is gone it isn’t there any more; the place it stays, different than before”. While it speaks to changes outside us, I think it also speaks to the changes inside us and how/what we see.
I loved this post Becca. It is such a truth. And I am so like you — I stick with it until it dies a painful death and I wonder, “why??” Most of this I believe stems from our own growth — from the time we are meant to be “with” something. It can be with people as well. We stay for all the “wrong” reasons, rather than recognizing how healthy it is to say “I must move on”…sometimes our moving on allows someone else to step in, experience their own growth and shine in their own moment. Our “hanging in” can prevent that natural evolution.
Yuo have given me food for thought and possibly a post. I think I have also fallen out of love with things, but I also continue to do them. Thanks for the inspiration.