What's circling the bathtub drain of my mind

Should I stop playing the two Folk Songs, which I absolutely love, yet seem to be destroying my thumb joints and start on the next piece, which is First Arabesque by Debussy, which I learned in high school WRONG and which has resisted repeated attempts by me to  unlearn and relearn properly, which would probably lead to frustration, or skip First Arabesque also and move on to the next next piece and be disappointed about it? OR, I could replace First Arabesque with Second Arabesque, which is in an entirely different book. *marge noise*