A personal essay about leaving a small village for a life abroad — and learning that being endlessly curious isn’t a flaw to fix, but the whole point.
My dear reader, now I live on the other side of the world.
Funny how life keeps proving you wrong in the most dramatic and unexpected way possible, isn’t it? It didn’t just nudge me out of my comfort zone — it kicked me up, spun me around three times, and dropped me somewhere I never once imagined I’d land. A small village girl, wide-eyed and stubborn, who ended up in a big city, and then — because apparently one plot twist wasn’t enough — halfway across the world.
If you’d told 16-year-old me this, she would’ve laughed you out of the room. And then probably didn’t take it seriously.
The Books Were Always There
Speaking of reading — that part of me never really changed. I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember. Not the trendy, aesthetic-Pinterest-board kind of reader — I mean the kind who had her adventure with Geronimo Stilton as a kid, turned into a devouring poetry lover and fantasy reader as a teenager, and never really stopped.
Books always give me a break from the real world — they make me believe in things like love at first sight, or the more tragic kind: heartbreak at first glance.
There’s something about words — the way a good poem can say in four lines what would take me four paragraphs to stumble through, or the way a novel can hand you a whole other life to borrow for a few hours — that has always felt like home to me. More home, honestly, than most physical places have.
The Girl Who Wanted Everything (All At Once)
Here’s the thing about me that took me way too long to make peace with: I have never been a one-lane kind of person.
I played basketball for years but I danced for years as well. Then I ran. Apparently my body needed to try every sport at least once before settling on “mildly athletic, extremely enthusiastic.” I was fascinated by psychology — human minds, why we do what we do, the whole beautifully messy inner workings of people. I devoured books across every genre like my life depended on having an opinion on all of them.
And somewhere in the middle of all that glorious curiosity, I made a very sensible, very grown-up decision: I became an economist.
High school economics track. Bachelor’s in economics. Master’s in economics. A tidy, respectable, logical path, dutifully followed from start to finish — while a small, creative part of me sat quietly in the back seat the entire time, occasionally tapping on the window going, “hey, um, what about… us?”
The Almost-25 Existential Spiral (We’ve All Been There, Right?)
So here I am. Almost 25, with my dog snoring somewhere back in my home country (but he is about to move here!!) and — if I’m being completely honest — occasionally popping the question in my head “wait, am I doing this right?” that seems to hit everyone right around this age.
Did I make the right calls? Am I actually headed somewhere, or is this just another one of those things I got really into for a while, the way I got into dancing, and running, and basketball, and psychology, and everything else that briefly had my whole heart before I moved on to the next fascinating thing?
I used to hate this about myself. I mean it — there was a solid decade where I genuinely resented my own inability to just pick one thing and stay put. I watched people with clear, fascinating passions — the ones who knew at the age of 14 they wanted to be doctors, or vets, or teachers, and never questioned — and I felt like I was doing something wrong. Like my curiosity was an error that I needed to fix.
Turns Out, It’s Not an Error. It’s Me.
Somewhere between the village and the city and the move across the world, something shifted. I stopped seeing my “too many interests” as a disaster and started seeing it for what it actually is: layered.
Because here’s what nobody tells you about being the person who’s into everything: you become genuinely, delightfully well-read and interesting. You can talk to almost anyone about almost anything, and actually mean it. You pick up new skills absurdly fast, because your brain has spent a lifetime training for exactly that. You bring a psychology brain, an analytical brain, a dancer’s discipline, and a reader’s soul to every single thing you do — and honestly? That’s not nothing. That might even be a superpower nobody bothered to name.
I’m not fully “figured out.” I don’t think I ever will be, and at this point, I’ve made peace with that too. I’m still the girl who said she’d never leave, now living somewhere she once couldn’t have pointed to on a map. I’m still an economist who low-key wishes she’d left more room for the creative stuff. I’m still catching myself mid-spiral at (almost) 25, wondering if I’m on the right path.
But I’m also finally, finally not at war with any of it or with myself.
For the curious minds
FAQ: Being a Layered, Endlessly Curious Person
Is it normal to feel like you have too many interests?
Yes, completely. Some people are wired to go deep on one thing; others are wired to go wide across many. Having many interests usually means you’re a fast learner who connects ideas across different fields.
Is it normal to still feel behind or unsure at 25?
Very. The “almost 25 spiral” is real and common — it’s the age where the gap between the life you planned and the life you’re living starts to feel loud.
What is it like moving abroad from a small town?
It’s disorienting in the best and worst ways. You carry your old home with you even as you build a new one, and it takes longer than you expect to feel settled — that’s normal too.
This blog is where all those layers get to exist at once — the books, the overthinking, the small dog who runs my entire household, the everyday moments that don’t fit neatly into one box. No filters, no pretending I have it all mapped out. And I hope it finds people who have or had the same struggles and thinking like me, and feel a little bit at home here.
Just heartstrings, and everyday moments, one wandering page at a time.
— D