I recently spent some time reflecting on the concept of novelty. The joy of new experiences, new places, new people. This joy is orthogonal; it can create new life paths out of nowhere, shift our perspective, and add outsized value to our human experience. I have spent much of my life in search of and discovering this brand of novelty.

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While these experiences are beautiful, they are not everything. In fact, I am beginning to feel that it is the incremental joy of consistency, the little novelties that come from focused effort and energy, that are the most fulfilling. Going a level deeper with a friend, watching your loved ones evolve over time, evolving with them. Small, compounding novelty that adds to the depth of the human experience.

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I am so grateful to live a life filled with both forms of novelty. Maybe it’s part of my (very slow) maturation process, but I now find myself orienting toward the low & slow approach and appreciating the depth of life’s little novelties more and more. The compounding joy of little things, the less exciting elements of building a life. 

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In fishing, this is appreciating learning more about your local water as much as or even more than traveling the world to catch new species in new destinations.

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In skiing, this is enjoying one single hard-earned corn lap in your local backcountry as much as or even more than lap after lap of cat or heli-served powder. 

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In business, this is finding as much joy in the feeling of grinding it out as you do in moments of creative ideation. 

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In the arts, this is enjoying the mastery of a particular medium and subject matter as much as exploring new methods and forms.

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Thank you, novelty. You’ve inspired my search for breadth, and I look forward to finding  more of you in my journey as I orient towards depth.

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