trying to be a kid again (kind of)

final sem musings

It’s 2 AM and I’m not writing this because I had some big revelation. I’m writing this because I don’t know what else to do with this feeling. And I don’t want to forget it.

A few nights ago, I ended up in one of those conversations that last far longer than they’re supposed to. The kind that starts with someone saying, “I should really sleep,” and ends with everyone still awake at 3 AM. Somewhere in the middle of that conversation, someone asked along the lines of:

“Why haven’t we done the things we keep saying we want to do?”

Somewhere along the way, I stopped being a kid.

I don’t mean in the obvious sense - growing older, responsibilities, all that. I mean I stopped doing things just because they made me feel alive. I stopped jumping into things without overthinking them. I stopped being stupidly, irrationally enthusiastic about something for no reason at all. I stopped experimenting. I started optimizing.

As a kid, I never really worried about where something would lead. I just did things because I liked doing them.

I once spent three straight days trying to learn a magic card trick because I saw someone pull it off on YouTube. I didn’t care if it was useful. I just had to know how it worked.

But somewhere between then and now, I got caught in the loop of “what’s the ROI?” or “what will people think if this fails?” or “is this even worth the time?”

So I made a bucket list. Not like “experience aurora borealis” kind. More like:

Basically: things that make absolutely no sense on a LinkedIn profile.

This was me trying to find the version of myself who once taught myself morse code over a weekend just because I thought it’d be cool to have a secret language, even if I never used it. The version who got excited about ideas before worrying if they were good ones.

The version who was allowed to be a kid.

I don’t have a plan. I don’t know what I’m building next, or what job I’ll land, or what I’ll be proud of five years from now.

But I do know I want to find that version of myself again, the one who didn’t wait for the perfect time or the perfect reason. The one who just did things because they were fun or curious or slightly ridiculous.

Maybe I’ll start by trying a new card trick again, not to impress anyone, just to remember how it feels to be curious without an outcome.

(wrote this just a couple of days before EF offer - i will write about it in my quarterly life update this week)