Austin Kleon’s newsletter a week ago had an item about curiosity, and I started to wonder if maybe I’m becoming less curious as I grow older. Part of it grows out of the anxiety of being middle-aged. My life is half over, so I don’t have as much time to wander down wrong paths, and if I explore something new only to find out it wasn’t worth my time, I will have lost that time in pursuit of a dead-end.

Maybe not a dead-end. That feels a bit dramatic. But maybe a detour that has set me off-course?

I suppose this raises the question of what exactly my course is right now. I’m not sure of the answer to that. I do know that where once I would read every article or essay or blog post that caught my fancy, I now tend to delete or pass by those items that don’t already hold a compelling interest for me. My interests are shrinking, basically. I feel like I have to devote my attention only to “those things” (whatever they might be) that are “worth” my time. Worth it, I guess, in the sense that they’ll help me write fantasy stories, or they’ll help me raise my children, or they’ll help me be a better person. And if something doesn’t fit into those paradigms, then I’m likely to skip it.

Not very curious of me, I know.

I suppose this all goes back to the attention economy stuff, and where we choose to focus our attention. I worry that if I focus my attention on the “wrong” stuff, then I’ll end up missing out on the worthy stuff.

But curiosity shouldn’t be so limited, right? How am I to know the wrong stuff from the worthy stuff if I don’t explore? What am I missing out on as a result of this cautious approach to my own attention?

Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s good that I guard my attention. After all, I don’t want my time to be taken up by empty-calorie ephemera or stuff that I ultimately find boring. I want the remaining years of my life to be fruitful and full. But, I also can feel myself calcifying a bit when I turn away from something new that doesn’t fit into the existing paradigm of what I’m already interested in.

I can’t describe it, but in the last couple of years, I can feel my mind closing itself off from the unfamiliar. I’m becoming more and more a creature of habit, and while these habits have made my life more ordered and sustainable, they also have the unintended effect of blocking out the unexpected. I’m getting too used to staying in my lane. I have my interests, and anything that’s not part of those interests gets shunted to the side.

Maybe this is unavoidable. Again, we only have a finite amount of time on earth. At some point, I have to discern what is worth my time and what isn’t.

But I don’t want to become someone so closed off in her elder years that she can’t see beyond the limited scope of her familiar interests and ideas. If I’m going to continue writing into my old age, I need to cultivate curiosity and growth. I can’t let my mind calcify and harden because if I do, I’ll be squeezing out my own creativity and imagination.

Being open and curious will take an act of will. I have to consciously practice it, otherwise the default will be to harden and close myself off from the unfamiliar or seemingly “uninteresting.” I’m not sure how to find a balance between cultivating my own curiosity while also using discretion when it comes to where I focus my attention. Maybe the balance means keeping these two ideas in tension with each other. Maybe there is no “solution” as such, just a continual effort to be both curious and discerning.