Returning to Curiosity
Every year, I sit down and ask: Have I done enough?
For the first time since 2022, the answer was a quiet, confident yes.
But that answer led to another question:
Now what?
I co-founded my retail design store three years ago, but I had no idea what journey I was signing up for. It’s a small two storey store in a quiet nook away from the main street. Each morning, I’d wake up and head straight to the store—greeting customers trying to remember all their names, making slight adjustments to the product display, figuring out if we were going to get any more sales.
What no one tells you about opening a physical store is that it demands your presence. Every. Single. Day. The routine absorbs your life. In retail, you don’t get to be late so the store must open on time. You turn the key. You stand behind the counter. You keep the lights on. You’re always reacting to what shows up. And like most small businesses, profitability came excruciatingly slow. The rent didn’t care if we had customers or not.
It was all-consuming and somehow deeply exciting. It was satisfying to prove I could build something from scratch, and I was learning more than I ever had before.
But sometime after we opened a second store and hired a small team, something shifted. I showed up, but I no longer moved with clear intention. I sat at my desk tweaking systems, refining things. The energy was gone. The store was doing well enough, but I was no longer pushing the boundaries.
I started wondering what came next.
Do I want to push for more growth? A third store? 10x scale?
The honest answer was: not really.
And that’s when I realised what was missing. I missed those early days—running around, experimenting with scrappy systems, the necessary personal growth and that constant learning curve.
I had let go of something that mattered deeply to me: inner curiosity.
Curiosity used to drive everything. It got me this far in my business, by learning things from many different fields. But it would no longer carry me forward.
Unless I chose to follow it again.
Pull the future you want towards you
In Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett, there’s an exercise called the Odyssey plan. It asks you to imagine three very different versions of your life. Your current trajectory, an alternative path and your wildest dream. The idea is simple: your life has many paths. The trick is engaging with them, pulling parts of them into the path you’re living now.
The speculative design field has a similar idea. Futures are categorised by scopes: the probable future (what happens if you keep going as you are). But, there’s also the plausible and the possible futures. Funnily enough, I’ve already lived one of the “unlikely” futures by starting a retail store. It was an idea, but it wasn’t the plan. It just happened because I was open to the possibility and met the right people.
Now I find myself standing quietly at another door. My most probable path is simple, keep working on the business. Keep refining. Keep the wheels turning.
But when I truly look inward, I feel a strong curiosity to explore the other futures.
What if I started writing? What if I picked up a pencil and drew like I did when I was sixteen? What if I had started that design studio or shipped that app? What kind of future would I choose, if I could?
These are not new dreams, exactly. They are old ones, returning. And rather than ignore them, I’ve chosen, however gently, to turn toward them again.
That’s when something clicked. I wanted to return to what had always lived quietly in my heart: a life of learning, exploration, and craft.
A new learning journey
I’ve always believed there’s value in small experiments. A kind of honesty in them. You try a thing—not to prove anything, but to understand what it might teach you.
Wisdom doesn’t come from reading a hundred books. It comes from trying something and sitting with the result. You only truly know if something works for you by testing it yourself. It requires the collision with reality. Contact. Practice. You have to put possibilities into motion.
In speculative design, it’s called the preferred future: you envision a possibility, then design backwards from it. You intentionally prototype your way there.
Maybe you only get 20% of the way there before deciding to change course. That’s also progress. Try things. Quit things. And ideally, have fun while you’re at it.
I’m 31 now. This year marks the beginning of my pivot—a new chapter of experiments, starting with this Substack.
I wanted to push myself out of the comfort zone, explore those possibilities. And most importantly, share them out in the open.
Exposure therapy
One of the first (and scariest) areas I’m diving into is writing.
Writing has always made me feel inadequate. I’ve often felt verbally illiterate, inarticulate—like I couldn’t express myself the way I wanted to. Yet, I’ve always adored great writing. I’ve admired writers who can distill complex thoughts with clarity and elegance.
It’s a strange time to start writing with the rise of AI, but writing is the best way I know to document a learning journey. It’s a way to hear your own thoughts more clearly. A way to reflect and to get better.
Hitting publish is a form of exposure therapy. It’s public. It comes with built-in accountability. No hiding or polishing for weeks. No waiting till it’s “perfect”.
That’s why I’m trying to learn in public. To share the process in real time, not just the polished reel. One scrappy note and half-baked draft at a time.
Of all the experiments I’m starting, writing feels the most foundational.
But this practice isn’t just about writing. It extends to all forms of growth: emotional resilience, mindfulness, creativity, health. And perhaps, in time, how to lead my business through its next phase not just as a founder, but as a maker again.
What I’m trying
Here’s where I’m putting my energy:
- Craft & creativity: ceramics, drawing and exploratory making
- Writing: essays, reflections, and personal storytelling
- Inner work: emotional fluency, meditation
- Philosophy: Reading the foundations, applying them in daily life
- Wellbeing: Optimising health and energy
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I don’t have a big agenda here—just a lot of curiosity and a desire to figure things out in the open. If you’re exploring too, I hope something here resonates.