Did you ever give up?

Couldn’t help myself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

I have given up on school more times than I can count. I gave up on high school then finally took the GED. I have given up on college no fewer than four times. Each time I left it was because of financial or job or time pressure. Each time I gave up I had regrets, but I also knew it was the right choice at the time. I did feel like a failure every time, but I also always knew I’d be back. I am back in the fray now and this time I plan to see it through.

On a more serious note I have given up plenty of times. I got very good grades in high school, and my family had great expectations. Since then I have quit med. school, masters in political science, trade school and what not. I’m now 36 without any formal education, but make a healthy living in the IT field. I have plenty of excuses, but it all comes down to the fact that I’m extremely lazy when it comes to studying.

Thing is I’m about to give up on my master degree in logistics as well. I work 45 hours a week, and hate having to spend all of my free time studying, Having just been promoted I’ve decided to get some IT certifications instead in order to further my career in the field. But I seriously do not now how to tell my parents, they never quite understood and they’ll be seriously disappointed.

@SuperMouse I know all about the feeling as a failure part… Which makes it all the more satisfying when you realize that you’ve actually accomplished something with your life. Do yourself a favor and see it through. I just wish I could say the same for myself.

I gave up on the music business. I was right there. I sat in Sony Studios, recorded with some really big names and toured and was offered a title track to a movie with Paramount. It sounds really golden right? They paid for everything, mortgage, cars, my daughter, my food, my clothes, all of it. I got to sit in some really cool cars and got to really feel like a star I guess. they gave the band I a taste of what it could be like if we were just willing to sign our lives away and wear stupid clothes.
Why I gave up????
It all started with a shitty PR manager and a bad record deal from SONY. Lawyers that had their head so far up a bunch of asses that they could you could not even hear what they had to say. We signed but under the conditions that Dave Grohl produced the record and that we got to record at Ocean Side with a possibility of having Steve Albini mix the tracks on 2” tape. All of that went against what the label wanted. They wanted us polished and over produced with this really big shot producer who we did not like (He will remain unnamed but he ruined Metalica). There was so much show boating and arguing all the time between the label, management and our PR manager. We came to find out that they botched a tour we were on and left us virtually with no money between cities and a few canceled shows. We decided that we would head home and say F-it. Our health, wellness and sanity was worth more. When we got home from their botched tour (the last one we ever did) they apologized up and down and got us a TV spot and a gigantic show in Las Vegas. All of that went to hell in a handbasket because we were not willing to wear certain clothes, pose a certain way in photos and kiss the right ass. All we wanted to do was to make a living doing what we loved and be able to provide a retirement and money for our families.
We took a break and while on break one of the other members decided that he had, had enough. That he was not going to sacrifice himself for a certain lifestyle under the labels conditions. We all saw it coming and we all felt the same but it is hard to turn away when someone is offering you a Ferrari and capital to invest. Alas, we did….We left and thought we could do it under another name and keep pushing on a private label. WRONG WRONG WRONG….Sony, not only took our site down and pulled the music form the shelf in under a week, they tried to sue us! They stopped all incoming money and I know they should have but they never paid us our last months paycheck. The investor that put most of the capital in on us offered to fight it and at least let us keep all the equipment that they bought but things were just not the same.
I hit rock bottom, almost lost my house, my cars and other things….I ended up bartending to make up the extra cash while trying to find a job. Then along comes another label offering to set me up with some people to make some music, I once again sacrifice almost everything (we are talking a course of years here) just to find out that the singer/guitar player up and left out of the blue one day…Once again, left climbing back up the ladder. I got so sick of the people in the industry and so sick of the stabbing and bullshit that I just gave up. I sold almost all of my drums and equipment. I am finally using my college degree and have a stable, awesome job. Yeah I gave up but I never want to end up in my 50’s broke and living paycheck to paycheck. I may have gave up but it’s nice to know that I was there and not just there but on top of all of it. Life is golden, I look back on it and I re-live it from time to time when certain bands come through town or I run into people in the industry that I knew. It’s the same old story over and over again. We say hi, they talk about how bad it sucks that I retired at such an early age, blah blah blah… I then hear them talk about how bad it sucks in the industry.
I am going to keep the band name out of it but if you would like to see a side project that I did for a release that never got released here it is. We shot a video for it and though we could do almost everything ourselves. Anyway, we were just done with the industry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83BK6Iz6UdA

I tend to give up on things all the…

I had to give up on having any relationship with my biological family. It was toxic to be around them and it’s “a closed system,” where anyone outside the family is the enemy and “can’t understand” why they will not help themselves emotionally or in any other way. I was the emotional caretaker, punching bag and all-around scapegoat for their troubles from birth to 31. Of course, as far as I am aware now, I am considered “selfish” for cutting off contact with them. You know, ‘cause it’s betrayal. I was supposed to rescue them from… themselves, I guess.

I nearly got fired from a job because of my relatives. Two of them would call the office to speak with me regularly, and if I was unavailable, they would bully the poor receptionist, scream at her and call her names. If they did get hold of me, they would want to keep me on the phone for as long as possible and get upset when I told them I had to go. My boss reprimanded for not being able to control my “fucked-up relatives” when he unfortunately was on the receiving end of one of their blasts. I left that job soon enough because I was replicating old patterns there, but at the time, I didn’t want to get fired.

The last straw came when I was going on a trip to see my LD BF. I get a call a few days before from one of the cousins demanding that I cancel my trip and move back to the hometown to live with a certain relative and take care of her. NOW. When I said no, that if it was that bad, then commit her, I was called every name in the book and yelled at for sacrificing my “duty” to “go f#%k some white boy.” ::sigh:: Mind you, this woman did some pretty inconceivable things to me that I won’t get into, and denied that she’d ever done them once I’d left her house. How dare I not want to babysit her and keep her from beating up her co-workers again, right?

I wrote them each a letter (after returning from my trip) and told them I was done with them and gave clear reasons why. Every so often I get an email from an extended relation that they’re still angry with me or they want to “tell me something,” but I don’t care to hear anything they have to say. Done means done. The specific people involved don’t know where I live, don’t have my phone number and don’t know how to contact me. Unless they hire a detective, they will not find me as I am not listed anywhere.

I’m free now, but it’s a loss just the same, a loss of childhood, a loss of those blood ties. I’ve had to give up believing that I will ever get what I needed in those days. I will have to find love and care within myself and with others as an adult. I admit to being afraid of how that’s going to go. I grieve for my lost childhood. I sometimes find myself envious of those with normal messed-up families. Until very recently, I was afraid that no one would ever want to be with me once they knew I was estranged from my blood relatives. Every day, I feel a little less guilty about having “abandoned” them, though, and know deep down that giving them up was and is for the best and that I deserve peace.

I gave up on Buster ever finishing his response to this question.

I hated myself and felt worthless. I lost my gf, house, car, and job in 4 days. I had a crack problem too.I ate a whole bottle of phenobarbital and chased it with vodka .I was trying to die. I woke up three days later in the hospital. I was so mad I was alive. You are a failure if you fail at suicide. I spent three weeks in the psych ward. Thats a story in itself. Ive never really been successful at anything. I feel bad for hurting my family. I would never try to kill myself intentionally again just because have you ever seen my little sister cry? I still do not really care about myself that much. Im reckless and self destructive. Anyways this is the short version.

@buster: sorry about your predicament. Maybe you need to forgive yourself and your “failures” and move on. Create new goals.

That may distract you from being so angry. It’s hard to be angry when you’re distracted.

I don’t recall an occasion for myself where I gave up. Perhaps that’s the flip side to this discussion: do you know when to give up? I don’t think I do. Call it stubbornness, stupidity, tunnel-vision, I’ve had a hard time giving up on a lot of things in my life: relationships, family, career choices, and so on.

I finally gave up on having a relationship with my mother.

She most likely has narcissistic personality disorder but has spent decades hiding behind an enabling therapist and my father who loved her so much he was willing to sacrifice the rest of us to protect her.

I saw through her over 20 years ago but continued the relationship for my father’s sake (he regularly would beg me to “let it go”, or “do it for me”).

Before my father died in October, I wrote her a letter trying to find common ground. She never responded to the letter and subsequent conversations (looooong conversations) yielded no results. A couple of weeks ago, she drew the line in the sand stating she had no intention of compromising, or controlling her behavior – “This is me, take it or leave it”

After seeing the incredible toll this took on my father and knowing what I’d need to sacrifice to keep her happy (my marriage for one), I chose to “leave it”.

So I gave up on her.

Yes, I have, more than once, and probably will again because there are some lessons I am slow in learning. This is one:

Some things can’t be done, and some things can but are not worth what it would take to do them.

Letting go of things I couldn’t do and, even more, letting go of the idea of myself as a person who could do them has been among the hardest things I’ve ever done.

I consider myself a fairly positive, practical thinker who is able to see through to the other side of just about any situation. Right now, I feel like giving up. I.Want.To.Give.Up.Now.

Like SuperMouse , I gave up on school. I quit highschool twice. I was pretty wild back then, and my parents thought that pulling me out of school would keep me at home where they could keep a better eye on me. Back then, if you didn’t attend school, you were required to work 32 hours a week. I did, but I didn’t like the job, so I quit.

The board of education ordered me to either get another job, go to court, or return to school. I wanted to go back to school, but soon got bored, so I quit again. This time my parents had my older sister in law sign papers saying that I worked for her doing houswork and babysitting full time so I wouldn’t have to get a real job either.

I pretty much became a couch potato during that time. I stayed up all night watching TV, got up at noon or later, then spent the day in front of the TV again or smoking as much pot as I could get. I can understand that my parents thought they were “protecting me from the world”, but it was the biggest parenting mistake they made with me.

At the age of 35, I got my GED and went to college on my own. it’s a shame to think of all the missed oportunities, but I think I did my best to make up for lost time. I think when it comes to education, it’s never too late, and one should not give up.

“You’ve got to know your limitations”
we all have them, it’s just finding out in time before you get overextended. sounds easy on paper but extraordinarily hard to see the cul de sac ahead. experience leads to wisdom. age and time-in contribute too.

I gave up on grad school – I ran out of money and sanity.

I have been tempted to give up on my son – he is bipolar and oppositional/defiant and it hurts just to be around him, taking his abuse and seeing my possessions be destroyed. But I haven’t given up yet – I’ve come close but he is still a minor.

Like several others have said, I too had to give up on my mother. After many, many horrible years of trying to heal our relationship, it became apparent that it was never going to happen. For the sake of my own sanity, I opted out for good.

I gave up smoking.

Never gave up my dreams. Even though I might not have a chance to make ‘em real, I still believe I’ll make it.

From the age of 12 i started studying the be an opera singer. Six years later i found myself at The Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (UK) being tutored by one the leading vocal teachers in the country. The pressure was intense was it was fun. I got glandular fever the first Christmas and never properly recovered, i kept getting ill and couldn’t sing, do any of the mid-term tests, performances. I got really behind on everything, and really bitter too.So i decided with the colleges permission and advice to take a year out with a view to returning the following year healthy and all guns blazing. I never went back.

After a year of being out of education, in a full time job, earning a decent amount of money I didn’t want ot go back to being told what to do on the off-chance that someone would take a shine to me and i would get picked out of thousands of musicians to make it big. I was constantly told, “if you don’t make it big, it’s badly paid and a tough life”. I also couldn’t put up with all the stuck up their own butt musicians who thought because they had been singing since they left the womb they had more of a right to be there than anyone else. The competition was rife and awful. The college ruined my passion for classical music…or maybe i let it slip away to easily… or maybe i was never that bothered to begin with and just a naive, success hungry kid?

I consider this to be my biggest failure because i have since has no direction – no real direction. I don’t regret it though i just wish i had discovered my destiny by now.

I gave up on Ed McMahon (sp) showing up with a ten million dollar check.

If I get rich it will be through my own skills and talents.