Everyone is capable of losing interest or passion for activities they indulge in. It can be short-term, like writer’s block during a short story or even an essay during a standardized test, or, unfortunately, long-term, and regardless of its time span, it can be devastating.

People may think that they’re useless or untalented because they no longer have the penchant for their interests, and in my experience there’s this specific kind of anxiety that settles in the pit of my heart when I realize that something I dedicated so much of my time and effort, didn’t give me as much satisfaction and entertainment as it originally did.

It was scary, especially when you’re raised with perfectionist mentality that’s screaming at you to keep doing the thing you’ve lost passion for, in hopes of getting that passion back. But really, that only burns you out more, and offers nothing but more dissatisfaction and even resentment if you continue to throw yourself into things that you simply can’t work on anymore.

We all want to succeed. For some people, it’s more than that; they want something else to be rewarded for, something else to brag about, or something else that can benefit them greatly in their future endeavors. Regardless, we all have our own reasons, and our reasons are one of the main driving forces that pushes us to pursue other activities and interests. And because we’re so dedicated to our own reasoning, we’re willing to put aside our mental health, relationships, and other personal aspects in order to keep up with what we started, and it’s simply not healthy to do.

Not many people are taught to just accept it and try to move onto something new, whether it be something similar to the thing you’re moving on from, or something so far out that it offers a unique experience to you.

We’re not used to it because it seems so foreign, when it’s really just a sign of maturing. Like clothes and children’s toys, we’re going to grow out of the things we enjoyed eventually. It doesn’t make us less likely to go far in life, nor does it measure our meaning or determine our place in the world.

We really have to tell ourselves that it’s okay to move on, or else we’re going to remain stuck in the past and unwilling to learn or practice new things. By digging ourselves deeper in a burnout instead of trying to find a way out of it, we’re missing out on the millions of other potential options that are available to us, and we’ll do more harm to ourselves than any good.