When it’s time to try again

A couple months ago, I started playing pickleball again.

This was in mid-April, almost exactly one year after I wrote this essay about how I was over pickleball.

The experience of enjoying pickleball again has been a reminder of how fleeting our preferences can be.

As I mentioned in that previous essay, after several years of organizing my life around pickleball, I unexpectedly lost interest. I tried for months to make sense of my drop in enthusiasm, only to I realize the problem was that I was making it a problem.

I didn’t need to understand anything to move forward. I just needed to stop judging my experience.

And wouldn’t you know it? As quickly and out-of-the-blue as my pickle passion seemed to disappear, it’s now returned.

I could spend the rest of the summer trying to understand why I’m drawn to pickleball again. What this says about me. What components of the experience make it enjoyable. What I can do to maintain interest.

Or, I could just go outside and play with my friends.

Is something interesting to you right now that you thought you had moved on from?

Are you allowing yourself to roll with your reignited interest? Or are you creating obstacles because you don’t understand what’s happening, or because you’re concerned about “going backwards”?

Trying again doesn’t have to mean anything.

By nature of being human, you’re incapable of returning to something in the exact same way you left it. You’re different. The world around you is different.

If you let go of the associations and assumptions you have about whatever’s capturing your attention, what would you try again?