Pickleball Therapy

A still life isn't still

Yesterday, before I left for a pickleball lesson, I was sitting in my house worrying about money.

No, it was more like:

Who am I to be buying pickleball lessons? I need to fix my whole life. The house. The storage unit. The subscriptions. The clothes I don’t wear. The art supplies I’m not using. The basement. The boxes. The things that belonged to my mother. The life I am paying for and not always living

Do I need this?
Why do I still have this?
Why am I paying for this?
Do I need a side gig?
Do I need to downsize or shrink everything?

They’re not bad questions. Some of them are probably necessary questions. But sometimes they can feel more like accusations. Regrets. Guilt.

I can make a plan like a pro. I can research and revise and analyze and reframe. I can talk myself into clarity and then talk myself right back out of it. I can imagine a new structure, a new business, a new daily rhythm, a new publishing plan, a new version of myself who finally knows what she is doing.

But I also know this: I cannot THINK myself into change. At some point, there has to be motion.

So yesterday, after rumination, I went to the pickleball lesson. I didn’t glide there in a state of blissful, suburban serenity. Let’s be clear. The club is not especially close to my house. It takes at least thirty minutes to get there, and longer if I avoid the freeway and go the scenic route.

And while driving, I resumed ruminating. The old familiar loop started up again. Money. Storage. Work. The house. What if this never changes? What if this is my life now? What if everything just keeps getting smaller?

Then, fortunately, I interrupted.

Look around. It’s August in Minnesota. (Rude. How did that happen?) It’s green and warm and full of light, and there I was, driving back roads to a pickleball club like a childfree cat lady with somewhere to go.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what my life is supposed to be about. I’ve had long conversations with myself about purpose, work, creativity, usefulness, money, aging, grief, identity, and whether I’m still an artist if I’m not making art.

Meanwhile, my body was going to a court to learn how to hit a small wiffle ball. To be an awkward, chubby beginner. In public.

My expectations were checked. But here’s the thing. Pickleball courts contain nearly 100% awkward people, even if they are not beginners. This is the ‘everybody’ sport if there ever was one. You CAN become a serious PB player. Or you can be a perpetual PB nerd with a perfect dink. Either way - you are among friends.

Come as you are, tennis skort optional.

At my lesson, I surprised myself a little. I’m not saying I played well. But I did better than I thought I would. My backhand, which was absolute trash when I first started, might now be my best stroke. I can serve consistently. I can keep a volley going longer than expected.

A ball hit me in the face, and I did not cry.

I can see what needs work, but I can also see that something is being learned. The part I keep forgetting is that progress can be happening even when I’m not watching.

After the lesson, I sat in the sauna for fifteen minutes. Magical. I don’t mean spa-magical. I mean intensely ordinary relief-magic. Heat. Quiet. Sweat. Just sitting there in my middle-aged Nordic body, which had just done a hard thing and was now being allowed to rest.

Then I stood in the cold plunge to just above my knees and counted slowly to one minute. It stung. Not exactly pleasant. But it was real and physical and immediate. For one minute, there was no room in my mind for the storage unit.

On the drive home, I felt so relaxed and satisfied, like I had accidentally stepped into a life I approve of.

I kept thinking: THIS is my life. On Sundays, apparently, I can go play pickleball, sit in a sauna, and use the cold plunge like the Viking woman I am. I can take a scenic ride home, feeling tired and loose and alive.

A few hours earlier, I had been worrying about whether I could afford this life. But there is another question now.

What am I making room for? What actually gives life back to me? What feels like stagnation - and what feels like forward motion?

There is the money we spend, yes. And then there is the life we forfeit because we’re afraid to spend anything at all. Energy. Attention. Motion. Contact. Play. The feeling of being a person among people.

Shrinking has a cost too.

Yesterday, I spent an hour chasing a ball instead of chasing my own thoughts. It’s not transformative, but it seems like therapy to me to discover a way to get even the quietest life moving somehow. And the movement can be subtle. One subscription canceled. A lesson booked. A decision to stop ruminating for the length of a drive. A minute in cold water. A willingness to be new at something again.

League play starts in three weeks. I’m ready.