Look at what you loved at eight years old before anyone told you what was cool. There’s a clue in there.

Whatever you liked before you knew anybody was watching is unusually clean information. At eight there was no audience to manage, so the choices were about the thing itself, animals or maps or building or making people laugh. The activity itself probably does not transfer, but the pull behind it often does. People who feel stuck later are sometimes just a long way from that pull.

Name three of them, as concretely as you can remember. Then ask what each actually involved: taking things apart, being outside, being the one who explains. Find a current version of one of those and give it an afternoon.