I’ve become a tourist in my own city.

In an attempt to slow down time and live a longer life, I’ve started introducing random novelty.

Today, I visited our most prominent museum. I visited it several times as a child, but that was long ago, and it has recently moved to a more modern location. The museum itself was more or less what I remember. I looked at bugs, some dinosaur skeletons, stuffed wildlife, interesting rocks, artwork and some anthropological displays of local history.

Museum stuff, mostly.

As interesting as some of it was, the truly novel experience was the before and after.

I took the bus, for one thing. I haven’t done this at home for as long as I can remember. I wandered through the underground pedways and metro stations I almost forgot existed. I walked through office buildings and university campus towers that I’d never stepped foot in.

Rather than the main roads, I stuck mostly to back alleys and side roads. Even though I pass nearby regularly, many of these places were completely new to me.

I stopped in a couple of new coffee shops and a locally owned bookstore that I pass every other day, but have never entered.

For a few hours I had this incredible new experience. And it was almost effortless. It’s so easy to forget how much novelty exists all around us, all the time.