Follow Your Curiosity
You never know what new paths you might discover
Dear friend, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve missed writing Snail Steps. If you’ve missed reading it, thank you for your patience while I took an unplanned hiatus.
This summer has been very long and very hot. However, it’s also been a season of very exciting growth: I pursued an unexpected opportunity that led me all the way to a job offer and a major career change! And it happened because I followed my curiosity.
How often do you follow your curiosity? For many of us, this may feel like a risky venture. Curiosity can be a portal to new paths we might not have considered, but following it requires wandering off our familiar, well-worn routes (or ruts). Curiosity can be an antidote for various types of discomfort—including anxiety, boredom, and aimlessness—but following it requires acknowledging our discomfort. Curiosity can be a fascinating and life-changing companion, but following it requires trusting that we’ll eventually end up somewhere good, even if we have to take many detours along the way.
How curiosity led me to an exciting career change
I’ve been wanting and needing a career change for quite a while. Describing why it took me so long to make the transition—and I don’t think I could fully explain even if I tried—would be a rambling and laboriously detailed story. So I’ll just sum up: essentially, it took a lot of struggling to work through my internal self-limiting blocks, and it also took a lot of wandering to figure out where to go next. Sometimes I felt so tired and discouraged I just wanted to quit the search, but I never completely gave up.
One of the many bright and empowering companions that helped me stay the course was my curiosity. Regardless of whether it felt relevant to anything else in my life or not, I kept pursuing my curiosity. I followed it to quiet places of rest, to small moments of wonder, and into convoluted rabbit holes of fascination. However, although I’d like to think my curiosity has become a close companion, I still don’t always trust it.
When a recruiter contacted me recently with an unexpected job opportunity, I was initially tempted to walk on by because I wasn’t sure if this would be the next right step for me. But then I realized: How can I determine whether this is the next right step unless I’m willing to be curious about its potential? So I decided to explore. The more I explored, the more excited I became about all the possibilities, and the more I felt that this could be a fantastic step forward in my career. I can’t fully express how glad I am that I kept an open mind and decided to pursue the opportunity all the way to the end—whatever that end might be. If I’d turned away without exploring I might always be wondering, What if? And now, because I let curiosity lead the way, I’m starting a new job and a new chapter in my career tomorrow.
How curiosity awakened me to the wonders in my neighborhood
Curiosity doesn’t always have to lead us to a major life change in order to take us somewhere wonderful, though. Sometimes curiosity meets us right outside our doorstep and surprises us with delight in our very own neighborhood. I mean this quite literally. Last week I took a staycation, and one of the activities I really enjoyed was going for morning walks in my neighborhood.
As I mentioned earlier, this summer has been especially hot (even for a native and resident of Texas like me), so I’ve mostly stayed indoors for the past few months. Only in recent weeks have I finally felt like venturing outdoors for more than a hasty walk to the mailbox. We’re still experiencing hot temps here in Austin, but at least they’re trending downward.
Maybe with this context in mind, it won’t sound so odd when I say that merely stepping outside my front door and walking up and down the streets of my neighborhood felt like stepping into a new and enchanting world. My perception has been refreshed almost as much as if I woke up to find myself staying in a short-term rental cottage in a foreign country. Not only have the cooler temps felt like paradise, but also I’ve experienced so much joy and delight in noticing the variety of life burgeoning all around me.
Second spring has arrived; despite the heat wave, recent rain storms have coaxed a gorgeous profusion of flowers to bloom. On one of the walks I took with my best friend, we were also thrilled to spot the following: a rosebush glistening with beads of dew, exquisite as diamonds; green acorns fallen from live oaks; brilliant magenta crepe myrtle petals strewn on the ground like confetti; two raptors—a buzzard circling in the sky above us and another species that may have been a hawk or a vulture, poking at something on the sidewalk just yards in front of us; and numerous tiny frogs hopping across our path, about the size and shape of pebbles. (I sincerely hope the frogs were too small to capture the attention of the raptors.)
Had I not been walking hand-in-hand with my curiosity, which possesses the bottomless fascination of a child, I could so easily and tragically have missed all these wonders of nature in my very own neighborhood. I could literally have walked by and not even noticed every tiny miracle right in front of me.
Curiosity is ready whenever and wherever you are
The wonderful thing about curiosity is that it’s always ready to meet you right where you are. Once you decide to take that first brave step into the unknown—acknowledging your discomfort and trusting you’ll end up somewhere good—all you have to do is explore whatever tickles your fancy.
I credit Elizabeth Gilbert not only for expanding my notion of creativity, which I talk about in my previous post, but also for introducing me to curiosity as a more accessible companion than passion. As Gilbert observes in her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, while passion may sometimes feel lofty, out of reach, and demanding, all curiosity asks of you is to poke around at one thing—just one thing, anything—that interests you right now.
“See where curiosity will lead you next,” Gilbert suggests. “Then follow the next clue, and the next, and the next. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a voice in the desert; it’s just a harmless little scavenger hunt. Following that scavenger hunt of curiosity can lead you to amazing, unexpected places.”
So…what are you waiting for?
How about you?
What kinds of interesting places has your curiosity taken you? Has following your curiosity led you to a new opportunity in your life or career? Maybe a new mindset, a fresh perspective, or a fun hobby?
May you and your curiosity become close companions as you explore uncharted paths together! 🐌
This post is part of a series about the gifts of slowing down. You can read descriptions of these gifts in my earlier posts, The Gifts of Slowing Down and More Gifts of Slowing Down.
A note to my regular readers:
I absolutely love writing Snail Steps, but I anticipate that publishing one post a month, rather than two, will be more manageable for me going forward. Not to worry, Snail Steps will still be a regular visitor to your inbox! I’m just following my own advice and *slowing down* the pace of this newsletter to take better care of myself, so that I can keep sharing insights with you that are true to my own life experience. Thank you so much for reading!