The stuff you loved at nine before anyone told you what’s cool holds clues about who you really are.

At nine there was no strategy in what you liked. Nobody was watching closely enough for it to matter, so your attention went where it wanted, and what it picked then is unusually clean information. Later preferences get filtered through what is acceptable, what your friends are into, what looks good to have. The early ones skipped all of that.

List five things you were absorbed by before you cared about being cool. Look for the shape underneath rather than the exact activity: making things, solving things, organizing things, being outside. That shape is usually still there and easy to feed.