The guitar's in the closet. The camera bag is wherever the camera bag is. You'd say you quit years ago, and you'd say it with the little laugh that closes the subject.
But listen to what you do at red lights.
You're still working the song out on the steering wheel. Still framing the shot through the windshield you'll never take. Still writing the opening paragraph on the drive home, every drive home, for years, for nobody.
That's not what quitting looks like. Quitting goes silent.
What actually happened is the practice lost its body. The hands stopped, the schedule collapsed, the gear went in the closet, and the part of you that does the thing never agreed to any of it. So it kept working with what it had left. Idle minutes. Steering wheels. The shower.
You've been calling yourself someone who used to. Meanwhile the practice has been living in your head like a tenant who never got the eviction notice, because none was ever actually served.
The one thing for the weekend:
Give it its body back for twenty minutes. The guitar out of the closet, the camera off the shelf, the pen.
No project attached. No plan. Just let the hands do the thing they've been rehearsing without you.
Josh
P.S. I finished my 30-day Ash Journal run on July 30. In public, one page a day, no edits, all thirty.
Five minutes. One prompt. One line of ash. The first seven days are free: truevitalyou.com/journal