Book 4 / Musings of a Recovering Executive
Following the Curiosity That Leads You Home
The life you lived may hold clues the life you planned could never have given you.
By Lynn Cirillo
A sunrise behind Devils Tower brings Lynn Cirillo back to a fascination she had carried since childhood. Decades of practical decisions, responsibilities, and an unexpected career stand between the girl who wanted to understand ancient worlds and the woman looking at the landscape. Yet the curiosity connecting them never quite disappeared.
That’s Not a Detour. That’s the Point. follows those connections. Through stories of a life imagined in England, a career in commercial real estate, enduring friendships, and the adventures of a 'Year of Yes,' Lynn examines what can become visible when you look at your history for patterns instead of judging it against the original plan.
Across nine chapters, the book uses excavation as a way to explore identity. It invites you to uncover interests, questions, and ways of seeing that may have traveled with you through changing roles—even when you stopped recognizing them as your own.
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Three acts—Recognition, Redesign, and Release—move from the life Lynn thought she would live toward a deeper understanding of the life that became hers.
Recognition
The Sunrise, The Life I Thought I’d Live, and One Practical Decision at a Time explore childhood fascination, a future that did not unfold as imagined, and the ordinary choices that gradually shape a life. These stories make room for both the beauty of an earlier dream and what an unexpected path made possible.
Redesign
The Wrong Side of the Dirt connects an early interest in archaeology with a career spent questioning how organizations and people work. Other chapters examine the voices we learn to trust and a Year of Yes that opened the door to experiences Lynn might otherwise have talked herself out of.
Release
The Breadcrumbs Were Always There brings seemingly separate experiences into conversation. The final chapters consider the roads not taken and what it means to live with curiosity now, without needing to decide that every earlier choice was right or that every disruption happened for a reason.
Who it’s for
This book may speak to you if you are less interested in finding a perfect next identity than in understanding what has remained true through all the identities you have held.
What you can take from it
Your Excavation questions invite you to consider forgotten interests, influential people, small decisions, and recurring patterns. They offer a way to look beneath job titles and milestones for the questions and qualities that have followed you across different settings.
That perspective can help you reconsider a path you have dismissed as a departure from who you meant to become. You may discover an old curiosity expressed through unexpected work, a friendship that widened your world, or an experience you want to give more room in your life today.
The questions are invitations rather than assignments. Some chapters also offer a thought to Carry With You. Take your time, let memories surface, and allow your understanding to change as connections appear.
“Sometimes the pattern only becomes visible when we stop looking at each moment as though it stood alone.”
LYNN CIRILLOChapter 7 · The Breadcrumbs Were Always There
That’s Not a Detour. That’s the Point.
Begin following the threads that may have been with you all along.
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Continue with Grounded in How I’m Wired, which looks at the patterns, needs, and adaptations that shape how you experience the world.