There’s something quietly unsettling about watching someone walk away from the very thing that once defined them.
Not in a dramatic, burn it all down kind of way.
More like a soft exit. A life that simply… moved on.
I was talking to a woman recently who once moved to Los Angeles to be a writer. Not casually interested. I mean packed up her life, followed the pull, got real work. She had a job. She was in it.
But writing wasn’t paying her bills.
So she took a retail job at a luxury brand. One of those roles that starts as temporary and somehow turns into a whole career. She became a store director. She built a life that, from the outside, looks stable and successful.
I asked her the question that felt obvious.
Do you miss writing?
She said “no”.
Not even a little.
And no, she doesn’t plan on writing a book. Not on the side. Not someday. Not when things slow down.
Just… no.
And I sat with that for a minute because it goes against this romantic idea we love to believe. That if you are gifted at something, then it never really leaves you. It just waits patiently for its moment to come back.
But does it?
Or do we sometimes just close the door and keep walking?
The Myth of the “Forever Passion”
We love the narrative that your passion is your soulmate. That it follows you through every phase of life, tapping you on the shoulder like, “Hey, remember me?”
And sometimes, that’s true.
But sometimes, life rearranges your priorities so completely that what once felt like oxygen becomes optional. Bills have a way of doing that. So does stability. So does discovering you are actually really good at something else.
That woman did not fail at writing. She redirected. And in doing so, she may have built a life that feels more aligned with who she became, not who she was when she first moved to LA.
And that’s the part we don’t talk about enough. Sometimes we outgrow the version of ourselves that needed that dream.
But Then There’s the Other Side
Because here’s where it gets interesting. There are people who never fully leave it. They might step away. They might get distracted. They might even claim they are “over it.”
But somehow, it keeps showing up.
In small ways. Quiet ways. Unplanned ways.
That’s me with writing.
I’ve had phases where I leaned all the way in. Moments where I pulled back. Times where I didn’t call myself a writer at all. And yet, I always end up writing.
A blog post.
A caption.
A newsletter.
A long journal entry that turns into something more.
It never really disappears. It just changes form.
Like it’s less concerned with labels and more committed to expression.
Talent vs Desire
I think we confuse two different things. Having a talent is not the same as having a desire to use it.
You can be incredibly gifted at something and not feel called to pursue it anymore. That doesn’t mean the talent vanished. It just means your relationship with it changed.
Think about dancers who stop dancing.
Musicians who stop playing.
Singers who no longer perform.
The ability is still there, somewhere in the body. But the desire to access it is what fades, evolves or gets replaced.
And desire is everything.
Because talent without desire is just dormant potential. It sits quietly. It doesn’t demand attention.
It waits. Or it doesn’t.
Does It Ever Come Back?
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
There are people who return to their original passion years later and feel like they never left. Like muscle memory for the soul.
And then there are people who don’t look back. Not because they can’t but because they genuinely do not want to.
Both are valid.
And neither one is more “right” than the other.
What I Actually Believe
I don’t think we lose what we are naturally good at. I think we either keep a relationship with it… or we don’t.
And that relationship can be intense, casual, on and off or completely dormant.
But here’s the nuance.
If something keeps finding its way back into your life, even in the smallest, it’s probably still part of you.
Not as a career requirement.
Not as a pressure point.
But as a form of expression that refuses to fully disappear.
And that matters.
You don’t have to turn it into a business.
You don’t have to monetize it.
You don’t even have to define it.
You just have to notice it.
The Real Question
Maybe the better question isn’t:
“Do we ever lose our passion?”
Maybe it’s:
“Do we still feel something when we return to it?”
Because that feeling will tell you everything.
Some talents are seasonal.
Some are lifelong companions.
Some quietly shape shift and follow you into entirely different expressions.
And some, you can walk away from completely.
But if you’re someone who keeps circling back, who finds yourself creating, expressing in ways that feel familiar even after time has passed, that’s not random.
That’s a thread.
And you get to decide whether you pull on it.
It was never really lost. It just became optional.
And there’s something oddly powerful about that.