“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”— Marcel Proust, French novelist, literary critic, and essayist
Back when I played just to play…
When I was a little girl, there was a random assortment of hobbies I pursued when I played (and how foreign the concept of “play” becomes when you’re taught about “productivity”).
I used to orchestrate grandiose story lines for my Barbies to act out. I would imagine entire worlds and characters for each.
When my cousins came over, we would spend part of the time scheming about how we would convince our parents to let us sleep over, and another part putting on plays.
I had a little garden, just my own, with basil, mint, lavender and a blueberry bush. It was in a big wooden container with wheels and brakes, and I could push it around- in the shade or in direct sunlight, all at my own discretion.
With all my heart, I loved my little garden tenderly. In fact, I felt genuinely heartbroken when my basil would grow long and woody, or when my mint would turn brown.
What play looked like as I got older.
As I got older, the stories I would write got more elaborate, and my experiments with the plants got more…interesting.
One time I sprouted a bunch of pepper seeds in my room, growing at least a dozen little pepper plants in my room in discarded pots of yogurt. For one of my birthdays I got a hydroponics kit, and eventually convinced my parents to help me build a hydroponic system from scratch.
You would think, from the outside, that maybe one should take these kinds of interests into consideration. Maybe these are those “signs” people always talk about.
I mean, who is digging around in the trash for pepper seeds and yogurt containers, aspiring to turn her room into a jungle?
But for whatever reason, I ignored these quirks.
I felt like I didn’t know enough yet to “settle” on what I naturally loved to do.
…and yes, there was also a fair dose of peer pressure and feeling the need to prove myself.
How I translate play from childhood to adulthood.
Now I’m 2 months away from turning 21, and I can confirm a few things.
One: I’m still a writer, and am finally learning how to take that side of myself seriously.
Two: I still love plants, and soil, and dirt, and asking questions about the natural world.
Three: By insisting on properly testing out different interests, I have found ways of applying those things I’ve always loved in a way that feels way aligned with the adult I’m becoming rather than the child I used to be.
Allow me to explain.
The Balance: You know what you know, but you don’t know what you don’t know.
Maybe, like me, after some introspection, you know what are the constant threads that have carried on from childhood into adulthood- those things that people might look at you with a sigh, and say, “yep, you haven’t changed one bit.”
Pay attention to those things.
Lean into them.
And then here’s what you do: explore.
You explore not to dismiss your interests (which was my initial reason for exploring), but to refine them and incorporate them even more deeply.
Finding every way I didn’t want to write.
For example, writing.
I love it, but there’s so many ways to apply it. So I tested it out.
I “combined” science and writing by trying science communication for a bit- contributing to science blogs and steering myself toward nonfiction.
It didn’t hit the same as writing weird emo short stories at 3am.
Then I tried ditching that completely.
Nope.
So I’m back to writing weird emo short stories at 3am.
Exploring the natural world beyond hydroponics and pepper plants.
On the plants side, I tried marine biology, and it felt close, but not exactly right.
I tried materials science out by volunteering in a lab at Berkeley, and over my gap year I learned some AutoCAD.
Not quite there, but also some part of it felt good.
Back to earth sciences.
Now we’re exploring geochemistry.
So far, that feels good…
The Squiggly Process Of Exploration Through Play
The point is to identify what fits and what doesn’t, and each new experiment you do to test yourself is new information.
You are just growing a bigger and bigger body of evidence to use when you make decisions about how you spend each day.
The process is 100% a messy nonlinear squiggle that will confuse and overwhelm you.
Make no mistake.
But it’s also incredibly rewarding when you find key components to feeling like you are really pursuing something you care about, are good at, and that sustains your livelihood.
I know it’s hard because I’ve lived the squiggle.
My life has been a squiggle for years.
So I wanted to share some musings that I’ve gained so far. Maybe they will help you find a little piece of yourself along the way.
#1: Tiny experiments.
Am I the only person who hates that phrase “I just knew”?
Maybe it’s that I have never “just known” anything, or that when I “know”, it’s not a “just knowing” it, but rather a “knowing, but…”
For me, knowing is laced with doubt, and I find myself going back and forth in a game of existential table tennis all the time.
“I know I like X, but what if once I experience Y, I like it better?”
The eternal struggle of a chronic overthinker.
Instead of the impossible advice to “trust my gut”, I create a portfolio of irrefutable evidence.
I test the possibilities in small ways and scale commitment to that option accordingly.
Then, my decisions don’t dwell in the realm of hypothetically what I would prefer to do, or what I would prefer to spend my time on.
It’s actually based on the actions I have already taken.
Before you commit to spending your life in a particular field, ask yourself, “Do I even like to learn about this?” Would you enjoy listening to even a single podcast on it? Do you want to get better at the skills involved?
Then, would you independently pursue experience by starting a passion project there or pursuing an internship in this field?
(If the answer is probably no, but you still find it interesting to learn about passively, you’ve got yourself a new hobby!)
Scale your commitment alongside the evidence that what you’ve chosen actually fits.
See it as many tiny experiments, not a decision you make overnight.
#2: Learn to play again.
I have an embarrassing secret: I forgot how to have fun.
Somewhere along the way, everything I did in my free time had to be “justified”, connected with this singular thread of profound purpose.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though.
No…really. Listen to me. It doesn’t have to be that way.
You can actually just play to play, laugh to laugh, and enjoy for enjoyment’s sake.
So whatever it means for you, go out there and play.
Does it mean taking yourself out for ice cream and choosing horrendous flavors you only enjoy in secret? Maybe it means learning how to roller skate and falling on your face?
No, don’t look up “cardiovascular benefits to…” or “how to start an etsy shop selling…” before you decide.
Make fun a good enough reason.
This is how I learned my own passions as a child, not by thinking about productivity, but by thinking about what actually felt good to do.
Play is natural.
That’s why kids are so good at it.
It’s growing up when we unlearn it, and in the name of being “practical” we actually end up sacrificing all the things that bring us the most joy.
Let yourself go back to the basics.
Play is where we meet the rawest version of ourselves, and only in knowing the rawest version of yourself can you make those more “serious”, “adult” decisions about how to spend your life.
Ah, the beauty of paradox.
#3: Finish what you start.
I’m a strong advocate for quitting, with one important caveat.
Only quit after you’ve given that book/person/sport/ice cream flavor/music genre/game a fair shot.
Try learning how to code before deciding with certainty that software engineering isn’t for you.
Travel to new places before deciding you never want to live outside your home town.
Read at least the first 10 pages before deciding to put down the book.
When we decide to give up, we often do it when we face friction.
It’s when the romance of a new pursuit wears off and we actually have to work, that we decide with dramatic exhaustion that we’ve had enough.
The climb is too steep.
Our legs are too tired.
The task is just too hard.
Instead, know you can do it regardless of the friction, and finish what you started.
Then decide, once you have conquered the mountain, finished the race, read the first few pages, or listened to the first 30 seconds of the new song.
Do the thing you thought you couldn’t do.
Only then will you have enough information to truly know whether you’re quitting because you felt overwhelmed in the moment, or something actually doesn’t resonate.
Discouragement because it’s hard right now does not equal misalignment forever.
#4: Listen to your jealousy.
Let’s not pretend you haven’t felt it too- the sting of a fake smile when you’re trying (and shouldn’t we get credit for trying?) so hard – soooo hard- to be happy for someone else when you feel like a complete loser.
No really, how can you not feel jealous?
When you feel more single than the number 1, and you’re so poor you have -$7 in your checking account, what are you supposed to feel about yourself when others succeed?
Good?!
Please.
It sucks to be left behind, and when we are all on different timelines, there always manages to be someone ahead of you in some way.
Either it’s that you’re single and they just met the love of their life.
Or it’s that you just got fired but they got into grad school.
They got a promotion and you got fined $500 when you can barely afford groceries.
It’s a normal feeling, yet we all try to swallow it shamefully.
But jealousy is also information, and it’s very important information.
We get jealous because other people have something we want, something we don’t feel we have already.
So you need to listen to it.
What is your jealousy telling you? How does your life need to change so that you can feel happy for others instead of annoyed?
Once you know what you want, you can actually work towards it.
So start listening.
#5: Have the courage to admit you don’t know.
There is a quote attributed to Peter Seeger, the American singer, songwriter, musician, and social activist known for singing “Goodnight, Irene”.
It goes, “The first step in solving a problem is admitting there is a problem to be solved.”
In a similar vein, the first step to finding that perfect intersection of skill, salary, and societal need we call ‘ikigai’ is to acknowledge that you haven’t found it yet.
There is so much pressure to know, to have a plan, and to carve out certainty in a world that thoroughly denies it.
However, when you say you don’t know, you get bombarded with unsolicited advice, pity, and disappointed frowns.
Now let’s be honest, there is no way to avoid the way people respond to your (totally justified) lack of certainty.
Maybe you cannot control it if part of being an interdisciplinary iconoclast is letting people down in the moment.
That’s why it takes courage to admit what you don’t know.
It takes courage to bravely test the uncharted waters that might just be exactly right for you.
Yes, you will have to stray from everyone else and face the doubts head on.
It will feel lonely sometimes.
But don’t let that dissuade you!
Once you find that uncharted territory where being your exact flavor of weird makes perfect sense, saying “I don’t know” will not be shameful, but liberating.
It will be your license to explore, your passport to designing your life with ruthless precision.
Pay attention to what you pay attention to.
It’s so easy to dismiss the things we naturally lean towards.
I used to think everyone could nerd out over a monthly issue of National Geographic. Obviously, all my friends would find that one Scientific American article fascinating. And of course they would rather get lost hiking on an active volcano than sit in a dark room watching cat videos.
(On that note, please see this Scientific American article about a team of scientists who invented a smart underwear that can count how many times the average person farts per day.)
However, realizing I had unique interests that weren’t shared universally ended up being one of the most liberating epiphanies of my life.
After zooming in on the things I wanted to learn about already, and the skills I wanted to get good at, I found that I could make a living out of all the activities I already saw as “play”.
In the end, we don’t have to torture ourselves, squeeze ourselves into a mold that someone else came up with and presented to us in a PowerPoint in high school.
It’s actually not as simple as “doctor, engineer, lawyer… and everything else”.
In fact, it’s not even as simple as choosing only one thing.
Your life is a canvas that you get to fill with exactly the colors and shades and brush strokes that perfectly suit you.
The only question that remains is whether you’re going to be holding the brush, or whether you will hand it to someone else.
Thought to Action
- Track Energy, Not Interests: For one week, note what gives you energy and what drains it. Patterns reveal more than labels.
- Run a Passion Experiment: Choose one small action that tests a curiosity (not a career decision). Give it a deadline.
- Separate Skill From Identity: You don’t need to be “good” at something for it to matter to you.
- Design a Tiny Version of the Dream: Ask: what would the smallest, cheapest version of this life look like right now?
- Let Passion Be Built: Treat interest as something you cultivate, not something you wait to discover.
Sources
No external sources were used for this post.
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