Things I tried to quit — and which ones actually stuck

There’s something about your 30s that makes you feel like you’ve finally hit the age where you get to decide who you are and what you will no longer tolerate. Like you earned the right to quit things dramatically and with zero apologies.

So I did. Over and over. Some of it stuck. Some of it absolutely did not, and I was back doing the exact thing I swore I was done with inside of six weeks.

Here’s the honest rundown — the wins, the spectacular failures, and the stuff I’m still negotiating with myself about. No judgment. Okay, maybe a little judgment. Mostly on myself.

What was I even trying to quit in the first place?

This is a fair question. It wasn’t one big dramatic list I made on New Year’s Day — it was more like a series of individual moments where I said, out loud, I am done with this and then stared into the middle distance like I was in a movie.

Some were healthy habits I wanted to break. Some were relationships. Some were just vibes I was tired of carrying around.

Did quitting diet culture actually work?

Yes. This one stuck, and it’s the one I’m proudest of. Somewhere in my mid-30s I got genuinely exhausted by the idea that my body was a problem to be solved. The constant counting, the guilt over eating a piece of bread — I was so tired of it.

I’m not saying I woke up one morning and loved every single thing about myself. That’s not how it works. But I stopped treating food like a moral decision, and that shift changed something real. The American Psychological Association has actually documented how calorie deprivation and restrictive dieting cycles do a number on your mental health — so at least science had my back on this one.

Quitting diet culture didn’t mean quitting caring about my health. It just meant I stopped punishing myself for being human.

What about toxic friendships — did those actually end?

Mostly. This one is complicated because toxic friendships don’t always have a clean ending. Sometimes they just… fade. Sometimes you have to actually say a thing.

The ones I’m glad I let go of — I’m still glad. There’s this particular kind of tired that comes from a friendship that only works when everything is going great for the other person and falls apart the second you need something. I don’t miss that tired.

The ones I tried to quit and then crawled back to — that’s on me. It makes sense because loneliness is a real thing and sometimes a complicated friend is still a friend.

Cheap wine — a tale in two acts

I declared I was done with cheap wine. I was going to be a grown-up who bought the good bottle and drank less of it and appreciated it more.

Act one: I did this for approximately four months and felt very sophisticated.

Act two: Cheap wine is fine and I don’t want to talk about it.

Did I actually quit doomscrolling?

No. Next question.

Okay, I’ll be more honest than that. I quit it in bursts. I deleted apps, I set timers, I put my phone in another room. And then something would happen in the world and I’d be right back in it, mainlining bad news at 11pm like it was a job I hadn’t been paid for.

The thing about doomscrolling is that it disguises itself as being informed. It’s not. It’s just anxiety wearing a blazer.

I’ve gotten better. I have not quit. If you have actually quit this, I’d love to know your secret — and I mean that with zero sarcasm.

Caring what strangers think — the long con

This is the one everyone says they’ve quit and almost nobody actually has. I’m in that group. I made the announcement. I felt very free for a while.

And then I posted something and watched the comments with one eye half closed like I was watching a horror movie.

Here’s what I’ll say — I care less than I used to. That’s real. The volume on that particular voice in my head has turned down a few notches. I stopped letting it stop me from posting things or saying things or doing things. That’s progress. That’s not quitting — that’s just growing up, which apparently takes longer than your 30s.

In my rant about what we’re all pretending to be fine about, I went into this a little — the performance of not caring is sometimes more exhausting than just admitting you do.

Saying yes to things I didn’t want to do — this one I actually quit

This one surprised me, honestly. I thought this would be the hardest one because people-pleasing is a whole thing and it doesn’t go quietly.

But at some point I just got tired enough that I started saying no, and nobody died. Parties I didn’t want to attend — I didn’t go. Favors that would have wrecked my week — I declined. Commitments that would have made me miserable — I stopped making them.

The world kept spinning. People were, for the most part, fine.

If you’re still in the thick of this one, the work Nedra Tawwab has done on setting boundaries is the most practical, non-preachy take I’ve found on it. Not a sales pitch — just something that actually helped.

Comparing myself to other bloggers — I tried, I failed, I tried again

I’ve been doing this since 2006. You would think that after all this time I’d have figured out how to just put my head down and do the work without looking sideways at what everyone else is doing.

Sometimes I do. Sometimes someone has a post blow up and I feel the whole thing all at once — the admiration and the weird little sting and then the embarrassment about the sting.

In my older post about what blogging actually looks like from the inside, I was pretty real about how competitive it can feel even when you don’t want it to. That hasn’t fully gone away. But I’m better at catching it faster now and talking myself down off the ledge before I do something dumb like redesign my entire site out of spite.

The stuff I quit and immediately missed

Caffeine. I lasted eight days and was absolutely insufferable. I’m sorry to anyone who was around for that.

Also — and this is embarrassing — I once quit reality TV for Lent. I lasted until about day eleven when I caved and watched an entire season of something in one sitting. Some things are not meant to be quit. Some things are just part of who you are.

In the piece I wrote about TV and what it actually does for your brain, I made the argument that sometimes zoning out to someone else’s drama is genuinely restorative. I stand by it.

So what’s the actual score?

Diet culture — quit. Toxic friendships — mostly quit. Cheap wine — did not quit. Doomscrolling — trying. Caring what strangers think — improved, not cured. Saying yes to things I hated — quit and it changed things. Comparing myself — still working on it. Caffeine — absolutely did not quit.

That’s roughly 40% success on hard quits, with a bunch of meaningful-progress-that-doesn’t-count-as-quitting in the middle.

And it makes sense because that’s how change actually works. It’s not a flip of a switch. It’s more like a dial that moves slowly and sometimes moves back.

The dramatic declarations weren’t wasted even when they didn’t stick. Every single time I said I was done with something, I was at least naming a thing that was bothering me. That’s not nothing. That’s actually a pretty good place to start.

Forty percent isn’t a bad rate for permanently dismantling habits and patterns you spent decades building. Most things worth changing take longer than one announcement and one determined week in January.

So here’s to the things that stuck, and here’s to the ones we’re still negotiating. The dial’s still moving.

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