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Today, I am taking the day off work to play in my first official pickleball tournament.

I picked up the sport during COVID, took a few lessons, and have been slowly learning to play. 

I am new to the sport of pickleball (which is kind of like a cross between ping pong and tennis), but not new to racket sports. I started playing tennis around age 10, began to play competitively around age 12, was part of a high school team that won the California state championships four years in a row, and went on to play both tennis and squash in college. I took off 37 years and here I am back on the court.

It’s so much fun! When I am playing – whether I am winning or losing – I can’t think about any of the other demands on my time. I can’t think about the work I have to do or the problems I have to solve or what’s going on with my husband or my children or anything else. All I can do is think about how to get the ball away from my opponent’s crushing forehand, how to dig out of a 7-0 hole, and why my backhand dink keeps going wide. It’s such a sweet relief to step out of my life for a few hours and just try to win a game.

So why compete? Why take a day off of work, drive an hour away, and endure a tense day of tournament play? Why not just have fun playing at the beautiful courts just down the street? 

Because I’m not playing alone. 

In 2018, my husband and I moved about seven minutes away from one of my oldest and dearest friends – the woman who was my doubles partner for most of those four years in high school. We also played at the same club in the off-season and traveled around to tournaments all over California, so we spent a ton of time together and hit a ton of balls together. I am playing the tournament with Leslie.

We want to test ourselves against the other players, see where we rank, see how far we have to go to get to the next level.

And also there is this: 

Being on the court with Leslie trying to win a game makes me feel exactly the same way I did when I was sixteen. We’re 58 now. We’ve lived a lot of life. But when I am standing on that green court between those white lines with a yellow ball coming at me, and Leslie is just there to my right, and we are trying to figure out how to win, it feels like no time has passed at all. I feel a sense of joy and belonging. I feel a sense of confidence that all things are possible. I feel like I am home.

What this has to do with writing books is that I think all of us feel something akin to this same thing when we are writing.

So many people who write books do so because there was a time in our lives when a book gave us a sense of confidence and belonging. There was a time when a book made us feel safe or seen or less lonely or more alive.

We write to tap back into that feeling that still resides deep in our bones.

We write to honor our younger self, who dreamed of growing up to do this kind of work and having this kind of impact.

We write because to do so makes us feel at home.

What is the first nonfiction book you loved?

Reach out to me on Instagram or LinkedIn and tell me about a nonfiction book that changed your life when you were a kid. I won’t respond right away (because I’m playing pickleball!), but I will respond! I would love to hear from you.

There were several novels that had a huge impact on me as a child — inspiring me to write, showing me that girls could be wild and free — but this is the first nonfiction book I loved, Tennis to Win by Billie Jean King, first published in 1970.

I have no idea how this book came into my hands, but I was devoted to it. My copy has dog-eared pages, notes in the margin, and underlined text. I read it over and over again to try to understand the strategy of the game and the psychology of it.  There were so many layers of knowing, and this book offered me the key to unlock them all. It seemed like a fantastically powerful tool – and I owned it! 

But this book was more than just a tennis lesson. My parents got divorced when I was 13. Those years were ugly. This book gave me a sense of control. I couldn’t control what was going on with my family but I could control what happened on a tennis court. There were physical rules to the way the ball moved, strategic principles to the way the game unfolded, ways I could use my mindset to my advantage. This book was a life raft in a stormy sea.