What to do when you’re feeling neither curious nor brave

[This was written two days ago when we arrived at our hostel in La Fortuna, Costa Rica.]

I am writing to you from my hostel room in La Fortuna, Costa Rica. We arrived this evening after a very long trip, which included an overnight stay in JFK airport, a stop in Orlando, three hours in San Jose, and a three hour bus ride. Needless to say, we are glad to finally be here. I have to admit, by the time that I arrived at my hostel in La Fortuna tonight, I didn’t want to do anything. I was exhausted, cranky, and exhausted again. All I wanted to do was go to my room and stay there. In short, I didn’t feel very curious.

All of us have times where we just don’t feel in the mood to go out an experience a new thing, or expand our horizons. Sometimes that’s okay. We all have breaking points and our bodies just won’t allow us to do any more. We need rest, and it would be silly and sometimes even dangerous to try to push past that limit. But most of the time we haven’t reached that point yet. We feel uninspired, anti-social, and uncurious, but our brains haven’t shut down. What do we do then?

When I first arrived on campus my freshman year of college I was excited but also terrified. The first week of orientation is pretty close to torture for an introvert like myself. I was overwhelmed, missed my friends and family, and the absolute last thing that I wanted to do was to go to another “getting to know you” event where I would stand awkwardly and try to talk to people. But my RA gave me some advice. She told me to go to every event, even if only for five minutes. She pushed me to walk just a little bit past what I thought my limits were, but also gave me permission to get out of the situation easily. I took her advice, and wound up meeting the man I would marry the very next night.

So what do you do when you aren’t feeling very curious or adventuresome? Take a baby step to push just a little bit past it, but don’t push too hard. Spend ten minutes reading about a new area, introduce yourself to someone you don’t know, or do a dozen jumping jacks. Whatever it is that you don’t feel like doing, do just a little bit of it. You will either completely break past your block, and go on to have a lovely time, or you will have practiced perseverance and willpower with no downside.

That’s what I did tonight. I didn’t go hit the town, but I did go down and chat with an employee about what activity to do tomorrow and booked a hike of the Arenal Volcano. Now I’m back in my room resting up to go out there and crush it tomorrow. Don’t let