When you’re young it’s easy to make new discoveries and try new things. Everything is new. As a kid just waking up each day and hopping out of bed can yield new unexpected discoveries. But as we get older and our experience in the world starts to add up and make us, well us, it can also set us down a specific path. A path that becomes familiar and well tread. Making those discoveries and having experiences filled with newness isn’t something that often just falls at my feet at this point in my life. If I want them, I have to seek them.

It was with that in mind that a few months ago I applied for a new role at work. Still internal to Automattic, the company I have been at for the past 8 years, but something new. Something a little different. But similar enough, I thought, that could utilize my skills and super powers but still stretch myself and my skills in new and exciting directions. A chance to do something new.

It was an exciting adventure. Then it was a kind of a frustrating adventure. Then it was kind of a sad adventure because it didn’t work out as I expected. I can definitely say it worked out for the best. But the best outcome wasn’t the outcome I thought I wanted going into it. The best outcome turned out to be having to sit with my thoughts and my feelings and wonder if this was really what I wanted at all. And then getting rejected anyway so it didn’t matter.

Except it did matter. It raised questions. It piqued my curiosity. Cami’s curiosity can be a dangerous thing. Curiosity may kill a cat but it leads me down deep dark rabbit holes. Sometimes they open up on the other side, sometimes they lead to something altogether different.

To finding something you didn’t even know you wanted to want. To the unexpected.

When you stumble upon something new and start learning you don’t step in with a bunch of preconceived notions. You’re able to more readily approach from a perspective of curiosity. And that is exactly what is happening with me right now.

I’m super excited to share that after 8 years at Automattic I’ve accepted an opportunity to try something new. Something I wasn’t looking for. But something that, when I learned about it, all I wanted to do was find out more and more and more. Today I started a rotation on another team in another department, and what might well be another world. But still at Automattic. I jumped headfirst into a giant rabbit hole and I don’t know which way is up and I am so curious that I don’t know that it matters.

Featured image by Filipe Delgado from Pexels