I Think I’m Getting My Curiosity Back

Day 249 – July 30, 2026

I know I am doing better when I start asking weird questions again. That is one of the more reliable indicators. When I am deeply anxious or depressed or stuck inside something heavy, my brain gets practical in the worst possible way. Everything becomes about getting through the day.

What needs to happen? What can wait? What is wrong? What do I need to solve?

There is not much room left for wondering why grocery stores always put milk in the back, or who decided hotel art should look like that, or whether people who design public bathrooms have ever actually used one. Those questions are useless. Which is exactly why I love them.

Curiosity requires extra space. You need enough emotional bandwidth to care about something that is not immediately necessary. I did not realize how much of mine disappeared until it started coming back. Now I am noticing things again.

Words. People. Design. Patterns. Why one place feels welcoming and another does not. Why certain things become popular. Why people defend traditions they secretly hate. Why everyone collectively agrees some clothing is formal and other clothing is not even though we made all of that up. Why we will stand in line for forty minutes for food if someone says it is famous. We are fascinating. Exhausting. Occasionally ridiculous. Mostly fascinating.

I think curiosity has always been one of the main ways I move through the world. I want to know why. Not always because I need an answer. Sometimes I just enjoy the question. That feels important right now. For a while, almost every question I had was attached to pain.

Why did this happen? Why did he do that? Why did I respond this way? Why did nobody stop it? Why did I trust? Why am I still affected?

Those questions matter. Some of them may never have satisfying answers. But God, they are heavy. I do not want every question I ask for the rest of my life to weigh fifty pounds. I want stupid questions too. Beautiful questions. Questions that lead nowhere. Questions that become essays. Questions that make somebody laugh. Questions that make me rethink something I assumed was obvious. That is where I feel most like myself.

Curiosity also makes the world feel larger. Fear narrows. Curiosity opens. Fear says, what could go wrong? Curiosity says, what is over there? Those are very different ways to walk through a day. I have spent enough time in the first one. I would like more of the second.

Maybe that is partly why Wild Poise feels so natural to me now. It gives all those questions somewhere to go. Not everything needs an answer. Sometimes the writing is just me poking at something until it becomes interesting. I like that.

There is so much pressure online to be certain. Everyone has a take. A position. A definitive guide. Seven things you MUST know. The final truth about whatever we have all decided to scream about this week.

I do not know. Maybe I am increasingly suspicious of people who are certain about everything. That sounds exhausting. I want room to say, this is weird, let’s look at it. That feels more honest. There are things I believe strongly. There are things I know. There are things I will fight about. And there are also entire continents of things I am still figuring out.

Good. I hope that never ends.

Because certainty can make a person rigid. Curiosity keeps windows open. I want windows. Lots of them. Maybe that is another thing trauma tried to take without me realizing it. Not just safety. Wonder. The ability to look at something unfamiliar and think interesting instead of dangerous.

That one hurts to admit. But it also makes me hopeful because I can feel it returning. I see things now and want to know more. People. Places. Ideas. Stories. I am not only scanning. I am looking. There is a difference. One is survival. The other is attention. And I think attention might be one of the most beautiful things we give the world.

To notice it.

To notice people. To notice the strange little details that would otherwise pass without anybody caring. Maybe that is why I write. Not because I have answers. Because I keep noticing things I do not want to lose.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And approximately nine hundred questions I did not have yesterday.