Excited about a club match?

You bet I am. I know it seems silly, but I haven’t shot a match of any level in nearly 2 years. In fact, the last match I shot was the 2014 IDPA Nationals in September of that year, and then I put my guns down for a while. I had other things I needed to do and priorities on where to spend my money.

But this year, as I’ve previous mentioned, I’m back! And I’m excited, because I actually really do enjoy shooting matches. I’m hoping that having taken 18 months off will help remember the fun I had when shooting, because to be honest by the end of 2014 I was pretty burned out on travel and matches and all of that. But now I’ve had some considerable downtime, and I’m legitimately excited about shooting a club match. Which if I’m honest, feels pretty good.

In a roundabout way, that leads me to the topic I wanted to discuss this post, which is burnout. I’ve talked a bit about this in the past, and one of the things I always said was that if shooting matches stops being fun, I’ll quit. It had stopped being fun in 2014, and so I quit. I’ll peel back the curtain on my personal life a little bit; from 2010 until this February, I worked full time in the firearms industry. It started with blogging and being sponsored, then gradually became more and more about the business side of things, primarily ad sales. The ad sales part really soured me on the shooting and writing, because every transaction became about the money, the revenue, etc.

Coming back to blogging and shooting and getting away from the ad piece has brought the focus back where it should be. Making good content. Which is why I’m excited to go shoot a match again, because match videos used to be fun! And now they can be again.

I apologize for the slightly rambling nature of this post, it’s just…been a while since I’ve been this excited for a club match, and I’m feeling pretty good. On a related note, if you want to support the blog and help us keep making good content, support us on Patreon. The first $600 in pledges will be used entirely to pay our existing writers, Tim and Charles. I’m sure they’d like that money. All the pledges after that will be used on hookers and blackjack.

2 Comments

  1. We are excited to have you back Caleb! (Somber singing of “you can check out but you can never leave” in the background)

    How did you know when it was time to get back into shooting matches? Did you try a different division before you quit? I know in one of the old episodes of Ben’s show you, Candice and Ben were discussing burnout and quitting the sport, which I sort of went through last year until I made some personal breakthroughs in my training, and the switched divisions. Now I’m reinvigorated to train and go shoot matches.

    So how did you know “it was time”?

    1. Honestly, I realized it was time when I shot the 2014 IDPA Nationals. It was a good match and I even finished first Master in SSR, but there was no joy in it. I remember it as two days of trudging through stages and shooting because it was my job, not because I actually wanted to be there.

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