Do You Find Yourself Interesting?

Exerpt: To find yourself interesting is to cultivate a life fueled by curiosity and confidence. It is to step into a room knowing you add value, even if no one pauses to listen. It's to weave an identity stitched together from listening with passion and telling stories with grit.

A single question can stir an entire storm within: do you find yourself interesting?

Does your mind, its wandering thoughts, its daily rhythms, its silent obsessions, fascinate you? Do the choices you make, the way you fill your hours, hold enough spark to keep you captivated?

In the end, you are your life’s work. Not the titles you’ve earned, nor the milestones you’ve crossed, but the presence you inhabit. The quiet and constant accumulation of hours, gestures, and thoughts, these are the brushstrokes that form your magnum opus - your life's greatest work. Life is not simply the things you create, but the way you allow them to shape you in return.

Character is forged in the friction of experience: in the adventures that widen our horizons, in the books that smudge ink onto our fingertips and stains in our mind, in the songs that echo throughout our mornings, and in the perspectives that unsettle us into reconsidering what we thought we knew, but can't wait to explore more about.

To find yourself interesting is to cultivate a life fueled by curiosity and confidence. It is to step into a room knowing you add value, even if no one pauses to listen. It's to weave an identity stitched together from listening with passion and telling stories with grit. Interesting people leave conversations humming in the air long after they’ve gone. They open doors, spark connections, and move through the world with a certain resilience.

So how does one become more interesting?

You say yes. With enthusiasm, boldness, and apology.

Yes to the unplanned trip. Yes to the art class. Yes to the dog-eared book a friend insists you borrow. Yes to the concert your mum longs to attend. Yes to the stranger at the café who just wants to tell you about their day. These subtle interruptions to your routine are not distractions, they're life. And life is ultimately not defined by milestones alone; it is a mosaic of these fleeting moments, tiny but luminous. Say yes, and make these little fragments shine, it's not just a conversation with a stranger, it's an opportunity to learn something you might've never experienced before.

Hold a project close to your chest, always - at least something. Not your job, not your gym routine, not your favorite netflix series. Something that belongs entirely to your soul. A magazine you're writing that no one else will ever read. A photo archive of every yellow flower you've seen in the past year. A melody hummed into your phone at midnight. A clumsy dance practiced in your bedroom mirror over and over until it's been perfected. These projects are sacred, they anchor you to the part of yourself that is endlessly alive, endlessly creating, the part of you that breaks out of monotony.

And always keep learning. Choose a subject for no reason other than the fact that it quickens your pulse. The subject doesn't need to be practical, it only needs to excite you. Refuse to be only one thing. Be a barista who is also a budget travel blogger. A student who learns rug-making on weekends. A contractor who studies astronomy by night. Let your identity splinter into many different threads, you can weave a life that is both intricate and expansive, you are not one thing.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” - Syvlia Plath, The Bell Jar

You don't have to let all of the figs fall to the ground, you can have a bite of many in a small and succulent way, that's the beauty that life has granted us.

The question of "if you find yourself interesting", could be viewed as an egotistical matter of being the most interesting person in the room, and maybe that's what would drive you to become a more dynamic person. But being interesing, not only to others, but to yourself, is a more intricate experience of creating a life that is full, adventurous, diverse, and inspiring. As we said, you are your life's work. The things you've done, the people you've met, the art you've created, your life's work is based upon the mere existence of you. Become more interesting simply so you can live more freely, with more intention, with more lust for the unknown. And, it might just open more doors that lead towards the future you yearn for.

Ultimately, it is a marathon, not a sprint. Begin with small intentions. Learn one new thing. Start one small project. Or simply say yes to the next unexpected invitation. I don't write this as someone who believes she is the most interesting person in the room, far from it. In fact, the moment you begin to believe that, you risk losing the wonder entirely. The magic lives in listening, in asking questions, in letting others reshape the way you see the world. Live with curiosity.

I say this as a girl who guides her life with a yearning to live fully, and that doesn't mean it's always enjoyable, but I strive to create and leap towards as many experiences as I can. And maybe for me it's all because I want to be that one granny on her rocking chair at 100 years old who seems to know way too many random facts and has one too many "stories" that you question if they're true or not.

So I ask you, what will you do today to become more interesting?

xx

Olivia