I quit

Talking about quitting and finding self worth.

Alas, I have returned.

I didn’t intend to take a few weeks off, but then everything got a bit too much. Oh, and my daughter caught a vomiting bug, which will haunt my nightmares forever.

2026 has been a difficult writing year for me as a chronic oversharer because there have been things happening in my life. More on that later.

I’ve decided, for better or worse, that 2026 is a year of transition for me. I am currently inside a cocoon, and it’s super comfy.

So, while I am in here… let’s chat about making fucking huge life decisions and how to know when it’s time to bite the bullet.

I always thought of myself as being decisive. I now know that fear-of-the-grey-areas is probably an autism thing. Either way, I don’t like uncertainty, and I often take it upon myself to get out of situations.

When I was working abroad in Barcelona during my third year of uni, I was deeply unhappy. I didn’t make any friends, and I was working an extremely difficult (and boring) job for 200 euros per month. The whole thing sucked.

As soon as I realised this, I knew I needed to come home.

I was quitting.

But was I a quitter?

Is that a bad thing?

There are a few other things I’ve ‘quit’ in my time. Most recently, I quit my marriage.

Quitting ≠ not trying

When you quit something really, really big, there is a voice in your head that says you didn’t try hard enough. But you can still try very hard at something and still come to the conclusion that it’s time to quit.

And in these situations, it’s not only your own internal voice that you have to deal with; it’s the judgement of others.

Let me make this clear: what people think about you has nothing to do with you. You can’t control it. You can’t change their minds, or at least you shouldn’t waste energy trying to.

It doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you. I’ve had several times over the last few months where I have felt hurt by things people have insinuated about me and my decision. But then I remember… Is it even their business? No.

This comes back to something I have talked about before: validation. I learned from The Blindboy Podcast that seeking external validation will, ultimately, lead to failure, as you are putting something that really matters (your self-worth) into the hands of people you have absolutely no control over.

If you only feel worthy because other people like, want or need you, then you are setting yourself up for failure.

Here’s what Blindboy says:

I just have to be cautious that I don’t allow external validation to feed my self-worth and my self-esteem. Because when that happens, when my identity and self-worth becomes tied with an achievement, I’m a good person now. I’m valuable now because people are telling me I’m valuable. I have worth because people are telling me I’m wordy.

And then I start to believe it. Then I become scared of losing it because to lose it means that I don’t have worth as a human being. Which is impossible.

So this week I’m focused on reminding myself of my intrinsic worth. No aspect of my behaviour, no achievement, defines my worth as a human being. My worth is intrinsic. I have intrinsic worth, which is equal to everybody else’s intrinsic worth, simply because I’m a human being. I’m no better than anybody else. Nobody else is better than me because we’re humans and we’re too complex to evaluate against each other. And you know, art is the same.

Listen to this full episode of The Blindboy Podcast here.

The concept of intrinsic worth is very important to me in both my life and my work. I co-run a digital accessibility conference that focuses on educating people who work in content, development, and design on how to ensure digital products and services are accessible to all. In large part, this includes disabled people.

Disabled people who, for their entire lives, may have been told that they lack worth because they are unable to contribute to society in the same way that capitalism wants them to. Perhaps they can’t work, or they can’t work in the same way. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when the world is designed without them.

When you remember that everyone has intrinsic worth (even you!) and this worth cannot be changed (either positively or negatively) by anything you do — or how people perceive you — then that’s when you are on the path to finding happiness.

For women especially, there is a whole additional layer of body image and weight loss. Dr Gemma Wilson-Menzfeld writes about this so eloquently in her latest piece:

How I Stopped Letting My Body Define My Worth

Which way will you go?

There will be times when you find yourself at a crossroads in life. That could be one you’ve driven to yourself, or one that you’ve been randomly dropped off at. In those moments, only you can make the decision about which route you take.

In my experience, one of the most popular routes is not left or right; it’s turning back.

It’s the easiest one. At least, for now.

I grew up in a house that felt like stasis in Red Dwarf. You know, when Lister ends up in stasis, and that’s how he ended up becoming the only living human on the ship, alongside his mutated rescue cat (and a hologram).

In the episode “Stasis Leak” (season 2), Lister discovers a leak in the ‘stasis’ that creates a doorway to the past, where he can go back in time and even change the future. Rimmer tries to save himself and grab a place in stasis, while Lister hopes to rescue his girlfriend, Kochanski. All of it is very complicated and a classic time-travel story (see also ‘Roswell That Ends Well’, season 3, episode 19 of Futurama).

Why am I on about this?

Well, I am not one for regrets. Instead, I look back at everything that happens to me as one tangled web, and if one event had been slightly different, it might not have led me to where I am now. You kind of need to suffer to get to the good stuff.

There are some things that happen to us, but there are also many, many things that we have at least some semblance of control over, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Making big, life-changing decisions can be very, very scary, but if you don’t take ownership of your life, nothing will ever change.

What I’m trying to say here is that you can choose your own destiny. Not in a woo-woo American dream way, but in a way that gives you at least some control over whether you wake up every day dreading what might happen or you skip out of bed excited for what’s to come.

And remember, you are worthy of happiness. In fact, you deserve it.

Listen to episode 5 of the podcast!

Nicola Muthurangu-Hall of The Exposition and I are back this week talking about Hollywood’s plastic surgery obsession and what that might mean for us normies. You can listen on Spotify and follow us on Substack: Emotionally Invested Podcast .

I’m making really good progress with my training for the Edinburgh Half Marathon at the end of the month; I even set a 10-mile PB in the training run last week!

It’s also less than a week until Access:Given, a digital accessibility conference I co-organise with Michelle | Specky Scribbler . I’m super excited to welcome loads of amazing people to Newcastle’s Catalyst building for a one-of-a-kind event here for the region.

Other things I’ve been enjoying:

📽️ Rose of Nevada- Saw this at the cinema and was in absolute awe. Filmed on clockwork cameras on the Cornish coastline, Rose of Nevada is a tale of weird (unexplained) happenings aboard a fishing boat.

📽️ Sirāt: This is under the ‘things I enjoyed’ section, but it is NOT enjoyable. If you like dark, traumatic films, then this is for you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

🎧Kneecap - FENIAN: New album is out, lads! Carnival is a fucking banger.

See you next week!

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home at Content By The Sea. I have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a human daughter.

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