Quirkbag Collection #32 – 20.02.26
There are few things like seeking novelty that make you feel refreshed and energised. Besides a cold shower and skydiving, seeking novelty is the easiest way to thrill yourself in your days. So that seems like a decent place to move towards adventure.
Seeking novelty has been my motto for the past few months as I navigate my “gap year”. But recently, this idea of seeking novelty has brought some frustration.
But it’s probably a “user problem” rather than a flaw in the idea of seeking novelty.
“Seeking Novelty” As A Motto So Far
To pump more novelty into my otherwise boring life, I started (then closed) a tiramisu business for fun, worked freelance in F&B, applied and got 2 part-time jobs and attended an enrichment course out of curiosity. And I also write the weekly blog posts.
It’s a fairly hectic schedule, with a decent chunk of novelty.
So has novelty really lived up to the hype?
Yes…initially.
And that’s expected, if you understand “novelty” literally. Whatever I do stops being new once I do it for the first time. It becomes familiar as I learn to adapt.
But doing anything for the first time makes you feel that adrenaline and anxiety, which is a tell-tale sign of novelty. It’s the fear that comes with unfamiliarity and discomfort. Perhaps even the fear of embarrassment or failure.
Seeking novelty goes hand-in-hand with forcing yourself to sit with mild (or moderate) discomfort. Novelty forced me to work in a new environment filled with strangers to gain the experience. It also led me to independently choose to attend a (wine) course in which I was the youngest and least experienced.
Committing to novelty brought me to sit with more discomfort and anxiety than I was used to, and that I find is a skill on its own. Pushing yourself into discomfort and anxiety but doing the thing anyways.
Novelty Evolves…And You Can’t Control It
Novelty likely either ends in a new routine, or fades into a one-off distant memory.
When I first started at one of the part-time jobs, I had no skill in the position. It was painful to suck. But there was grace in embracing the “suck”, in accepting the feeling of being a beginner again. Voluntarily.
This is novelty at its prime – something so new and foreign that you could not do. In this case of novelty, there was thrill from learning and doing. But there was also anxiety and discomfort in whatever I tried to do.
Now, I am slightly better at the job. The novelty has mostly worn off, and going to work now feels more like a routine than an adventure. That’s the result of time and intentional exposure. And therein lies an underlying frustration – the routinisation of our endeavours.
The more you do a task or experience something, the less novelty you feel. It leads to frustration because novelty was your goal, so now you need to find something else.
I guess the question I ask myself is, “without novelty, is this something still worth pursuing in the near future?” (Who knows?? We’ll see…)
You could choose to control this “novelty” by pursuing a ridiculous number of things. But eventually, seeking novelty is just a tool to jolt you. I really doubt it brings life-long satisfaction. You could also choose never to engage in that activity again, because maybe it sucked, but novelty evolves either ways and it never stays the same for that particular thing.
Novelty is a one-time punch card for most experiences – it’s the “first time” that hits the hardest, then wanes with subsequent tries.
Of course, skydiving is probably still a novelty after 10 jumps for the average person.
Will You Stop Seeking Novelty?
I doubt so, at least in general. Life is full of novelty. Seeking it just makes life more interesting sometimes.
Novelty is just a word to describe change, albeit with a more positive tone. From a new apartment to an unexpected health diagnosis, novelty springs from time to time. What you call it depends on whether you like it or not. But the issue, or experience, is nonetheless new.
Seeking novelty hints at a more optimistic approach towards life – one that you are steering and actively navigating. Conversely, novelty that strikes you off guard and leaves you hanging turns out to be curveballs – like a cancer diagnosis.
We seek novelty as a means of shaking up the routine. But seeking novelty stops being fun and exciting when we are no longer in control. When we experience novelty in a way that shakes our boat a bit too hard, we retreat into anxiety and frustration.
Regardless of whether anxiety and frustration arise, novelty is just life exerting itself. How we perceive it dictates whether you call it “novelty” or “life sucks”. And so seeking novelty, in the conventional thrill-seeking sense, is really a search for meaningful experiences to enjoy.
Solution: Should I Seek Novelty?
Honestly, the answer depends on your present phase in life. But novelty will never substitute fulfilment.
If you think about novelty like the gas pedal in a car, flooring the pedal as you are nearing the speed limit is foolish. If your life is already zooming up and down with your emotions oozing out the window, my humble suggestion is to tone down the novelty and excitement. You could use a slower pace and some tranquility.
Yet, if you’re like me, and you could use a jolt regularly to explore your world, seeking novelty is a practical way to open new doors. I never started a business until I sold tiramisu. I’ve never voluntarily attended a course before, until recently.
It takes effort to force yourself into doing something new, especially if you’re an introvert that prefers comfort and no limelight. This blog was my novelty in Mar 2025.
Seek novelty knowing that life has its own bucket of it. You never know when you will be splashed. In a dilemma, I often ask myself, if the worst-case scenario here occurred, is this still an experience worth embracing and having 50 years from now?
Or…if you prefer a more drastic, cinematic version: Get in the car.
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Hi! I’m Zac, the guy behind this slightly off-beat, quirky blog. I’m currently on a quest to find out more about myself, who I am and what life has to offer before Uni starts. This blog is my little secret space where I step out of my comfort zone to share my thoughts and life experiences. I hope you enjoy reading. I do weekly posts. Share them if you like, or not.
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