When it’s time to move on

Somewhere between 2020 and 2022, pickleball became the new CrossFit.

People who were playing were obsessed, talking about it non-stop. And people who weren’t playing were annoyed, tired of hearing about it.

In this divided pickle era, I joined team obsessed.

I started playing pickleball regularly in 2021. It wasn’t long before most of my non-working hours were spent on the pickleball court or making plans to get on the pickleball court.

Pickleball was what I looked forward to.

I arranged my work schedule to accommodate playing. I texted my pickleball friends constantly. I got to know Los Angeles by traveling to different courts and tournaments. At one point I even created an app to help connect pickleball players.

For about three solid years, pickleball was my main source of exercise, community, curiosity, creativity, connection, competition, and fun.

Then sometime last year, unexpectedly, I stopped enjoying pickleball.

It felt sudden. One day, driving to my local courts, I noticed I didn’t feel like playing.

For the uninitiated, “I don’t feel like playing” isn’t a thing in pickleball. You always feel like playing!

And I did. Until I didn’t.

Looking back, my disenchantment with pickleball happened gradually.

I wasn’t looking forward to games.

I felt relieved on days I wasn’t scheduled to play.

I lost interest in competing in tournaments.

I dropped out of pickleball text threads.

I stopped buying paddles.

The signs were there, but it wasn’t until that fateful drive to my local courts that I realized what was happening: It was time for me to move on from pickleball.

Pickleball is life

As any pickleball enthusiast will tell you: Pickleball is life!

And for real, it is. Just in a slightly different way than my beloved nutty pickleballers mean it.

My little story about pickleball is a metaphor for the things in life that somehow—seemingly out of nowhere, often inexplicably—lose their charge.

It can be a job, a business, a hobby, a creative pursuit, a romantic relationship, a friendship, a location, a routine, you name it.

Losing enthusiasm for something that once lit you up can be disorienting.

Why don’t I feel like doing this?
Why isn’t this working anymore?
Why do I wish I was someplace else?
Why is this so hard now?
Why can’t this be the way it was?

Here are the answers to those questions:

Because you don’t.
Because it’s not.
Because you do.
Because it is.
Because it can’t.

Sometimes things that were once a hell yes become a hell no or an meh. And that’s okay.

Yet the default tendency is to make this a problem, to make yourself wrong or bad for not feeling the way you did before.

I spent about six months analyzing and trying to understand why I wasn’t excited about pickleball anymore.

I had a bunch of stories running about how I should be more committed, how I’ll lose all my friends, how I’ll become sedentary if I stop doing this one form of exercise I had never even heard of a few years ago.

Coaching helped me get clear: I wasn’t excited about pickleball anymore because I wasn’t. I didn’t need to understand it in order to move forward.

The only problem was that I was making it a problem—that I was judging my experience.

Is there something in your life that has lost its charge? Something you used to be fired up about and now you’re not?

If so, are you making yourself wrong or bad for having that experience?

You are never the same person you were three years, three months, three days, or three minutes ago. Changing your mind and heart is an unavoidable part of the human experience.

The part that’s in your control is what you choose to do about the changes occurring inside of you.

Will you choose to stand in judgement or move on?

Just for now

If you decide it’s time for you to move on from something, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re moving on from it forever.

I still play pickleball.

I really appreciate it as an opportunity to be outside exercising and connecting with friends. I just play a lot less and it doesn’t occupy space in my consciousness when I’m not on the court.

Whatever has lost its charge in your life may be something you move on from for now, only to return to it in a few months or years. Or maybe moving on means you keep it in your life but approach it differently.

Maybe you’re ready to move on completely.

You can think of moving on as simply not staying the same. Or as an experiment in trying something a new way.

It doesn’t need to mean more than what it is—a choice to start again, from here.