Looking at Myself Through the Stars

Recently, I found myself reading through my birth chart. Whether astrology is something you believe in or simply another way of reflecting on yourself, it has a way of asking interesting questions. Instead of wondering whether every description was accurate, I found myself asking something different.

How much of this sounds like the woman I have become?

It made me pause and think.

I’ve always been curious.

As a child, I loved looking through atlases and spinning the globe. I wasn’t only interested in where countries were. I found myself wondering about the people who lived there. What were their lives like? What did they do each day? What did their homes look like? Even though I would never meet most of them, I loved imagining lives that were completely different from my own.

I also spent time flipping through the dictionary, not because anyone asked me to, but because I enjoyed discovering new words. I wanted to know what they meant, how they sounded, and how they could fit into a sentence. Looking back now, I suppose that little girl had no idea she would one day write books and articles of her own.

There were other things that fascinated me too. I loved glass, marbles, and anything that caught the light. Even today, I find myself drawn to prisms and sun catchers, watching sunlight scatter into tiny rainbows across a room. Some interests never really leave us. They simply grow with us.

Over the years, my curiosity expanded beyond places and words. I became interested in people. Why do we make the choices we do? Why can two people experience something similar yet carry it with them in completely different ways? I don’t always know if I’ve understood people correctly, but I’ve never stopped trying to understand them a little better.

Looking back, I can see that curiosity has quietly followed me throughout my life.

It was there when I spent two years baking bread before publishing Bread & Balance. It was there while writing Things That No Longer Exist Except in Me, reflecting on memories that had stayed with me for decades. It’s there every time I pick up my camera and notice a flower, a shadow, a raindrop, or an ordinary object that someone else might simply walk past.

I’ve also realised that I enjoy creating far more than I ever expected. Books, articles, photography, notebooks, and other creative projects may look unrelated, but to me they all come from the same place. Creating energises me. I enjoy taking an idea and slowly shaping it into something that feels complete. I keep refining it until I’m happy with it. Whether it’s a book, a photograph, an article, or another creative project, the first person it has to satisfy is me.

One thing that has remained constant is my love of learning. I enjoy discovering new ideas, exploring different subjects, and asking questions. Sometimes I move from one project to another before I’ve completely finished the first. Somehow, I usually find my way back.

Life has also taught me that people are rarely as simple as they first appear. I can enjoy being on my own and still long for companionship. I like quiet days, yet my mind is rarely quiet. Some of my best ideas—or sometimes just the missing piece of an idea—arrive late at night. Occasionally I’ll wake up with a thought that wasn’t there when I went to sleep. Other times it comes while I’m sitting quietly in the dark. I’ve learned to write those ideas down because by morning they often disappear as quietly as they arrived.

Reading my birth chart didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. What it did do was encourage me to stop for a moment and notice something I hadn’t thought about before.

The interests have changed over the years, but perhaps the person behind them hasn’t changed as much as I imagined.

The little girl who looked through atlases and dictionaries, who wondered about people she would never meet, who collected marbles because she loved the way they caught the light, is still here. Today she simply asks different questions, writes different words, and notices different kinds of beauty.

Whether our personalities are shaped by the stars, by our choices, or simply by the lives we’ve lived, I don’t think anyone can answer with certainty.

What I do know is this.

I’m still curious.

I still enjoy learning.

I still find joy in creating.

And after all these years, I still find myself looking a little more closely—at the world, at other people, and every now and then, at myself.