Curiosity Never Leaves Me Alone

Written by Desiree Steele

People often ask me why I ask so many questions. The truth is, I don't know how not to.

Curiosity has followed me my entire life. It has taken me down backroads instead of highways, onto front porches with complete strangers, across oceans, through church doors, into kitchens, behind a camera, and 100 kilometers across Spain. I don't ask questions because I think I have the answers. I ask them because I think there's always another story waiting to be discovered.

I wonder why a raven chose my fifth-floor windowsill to stare at me and yell as if it had something important to say. I wonder about the smiling homeless man standing at an Austin intersection. Who loves him? Who misses him? What happened between the little boy he once was and the man standing there today? I wonder why I can sometimes feel the heaviness in a room before anyone has spoken a single word.

I wonder why trauma can convince someone they can't trust their own mind. I wonder why churches can preach love while overlooking people who are hurting. I wonder why we build walls between countries when, standing on the Rio Grande looking toward Mexico, all I could think was, We all just want to be friends. I wonder why a walk across Spain can change a person more than years of standing still.

I wonder why I stop to photograph weeds growing through concrete while others never notice them. Why an old weathered barn catches my attention more than a brand-new building. Why recipes tell stories about the places we've been and the people we've loved. Why horses seem to heal hearts that words never could. Why beauty has become something we chase instead of something we notice. And why people are sometimes so afraid of questions.

I think some of this started when I was a kid sitting on my grandparents' living room floor, flipping through National Geographic magazines. I was fascinated by the photographs, but even more fascinated by the people and places inside them. I wanted to know their stories. I didn't know then that curiosity would eventually become such a big part of my life. To this day, I'll still pick up a National Geographic in the grocery store checkout line and start flipping through it.

Maybe that's why I've always loved backroads more than highways. The highway gets you there faster. The backroad invites you to slow down. To notice the old porch with the rocking chair. The wildflowers growing where no one planted them. The conversations you never planned to have. The stories that never make the headlines but somehow become the ones you remember.

Four years ago, I drove to West Texas by myself for the first time. Somewhere along those long stretches of road, with all that space around me and nobody else in the car, I listened to Darden Smith's The Habit of Noticing.

I highly recommend it.

There was something about hearing those words while I was out there alone that felt almost perfectly timed. The book wasn't teaching me something I didn't already do. It was reminding me of something I already knew but had never quite understood about myself.

I was a noticer.

I always had been.

Suddenly, something that had sometimes made me feel different—the questions, the curiosity, stopping for things other people drove past, wanting to understand the story underneath what I could see—felt less like an oddity and more like a way of moving through the world.

That realization changed how I knew myself.

It also helped me understand why the things I love don't feel separate to me. Photography, writing, food, travel, sitting across from someone and asking one more question—they all begin in the same place.

I notice something. Then I want to know its story.

Photography lets me show you what stopped me. Writing lets me explore why it mattered. Food tells stories about where we've been, who raised us, who gathered around our tables, and the memories we carry with us. And curiosity keeps pulling me toward the next one.

That's why The Habit of Noticing became the name of my exhibit at Inspired Minds Art Center this fall. The photographs on the wall are things that made me stop. Some are beautiful. Some are ordinary. Some might be things you would have walked right past.

That's kind of the point.

I don't necessarily want you to leave the exhibit seeing the world the way I do. I hope you leave wanting to pay a little more attention to the way you see it.

So now I'm curious... When was the last time you stopped long enough to wonder about the story right in front of you?

The Amster Gallery Spotlight Residency continues this fall with Desiree Steele, a Texas-based photographer, writer, and storyteller whose work, photographed entirely on film, is built around a simple practice: slowing down long enough to notice the ordinary things most of us drive right past. Her exhibit, The Habit of Noticing, draws on the same instinct that shaped her memoir, Backroads & Backporches: The Road Back to Me — a habit of paying attention to the stories hiding in plain sight. Desiree's photographs are on display and available for purchase in the Amster Art Gallery through December 2026.