About this site

Gen Z will change the world. We have to. And we'll do it with a sense of curiosity and whimsy. This is a place for exploring the world around us: the crucial, the fun, and especially... the Change.

The Curious Zoomer (TCZ) publishes content on a diverse range of topics that shape our day to day and our future, while fostering connections as we seek avenues to navigate it all. I post my thoughts on significant subjects such as social norms, the job market, AI, modern dating, work-life balance, & facing the unknown, then balance it out with intriguing subjects like various cultural traditions, geography, historical anecdotes, and some of the more lighthearted current events that don't receive widespread attention. Did you know the pope gave his blessing for a rave in Slovakia? Or that a raccoon got intoxicated and passed out in a bathroom? It may not always be immensely useful bits of knowledge, but hey. At least we're curious.

Who runs this thing?

My name is Hudson Dunbar. I am a recent college grad based in Auburn, AL, where I am a private music teacher. Being brought up in one of the state's better school systems, I had the opportunity to explore nearly any subject I was interested in, but had no idea what I was interested in studying. Being told your future is bright gets old quickly, if you don't want to pursue any of these things for a living. Every school subject — math, science, writing, and the like — I aced and even kind of enjoyed sometimes, but never enough to pursue one professionally. I worried about opportunity cost, agonizing over risks of pigeon-holing myself, and thought coming to a decision for my major would destroy me. I needed to get it absolutely right the first time!

Can you spot the issue with this? Having that type of outlook and personality, the idea of not coming to a decision is even more horrifying. In the end, I went with what I was best at — music performance. Ironically, I decided to change my major after my first year to composition, but either career path was antithetical to a risk-averse human being who craved an already laid out, followable and "safe" trajectory, like with engineering or computer science.

Following graduation and earning my degree in Music Composition & Technology from Auburn University, I had only vague ideas on what I might want do with it, which weakened as I settled into my growing online drum lessons studio. It was (and still is) the path of least resistance to making decent money right away, but gave me the space to explore other budding interests. They were plentiful, intense, inescapable — and I came to a decision.

Life is too short and abundant to do only one thing. The realization hit me like a truck — I had been obsessed with drumline for 10 years, and percussion for longer than that. There's so much more for us to say, and so much more for us to do... and what about our generation? My hunch is that we feel there should be more invigorating parts to existence than doom-scrolling, stressing about everything, and feeling like we can't leave the house. Having had some success growing a small following on Instagram — enough to get my drumming clients — I gained the confidence to pursue content-creation in other capacities.

The goal? There are a few, but my North Star is the desire to fight back against the trends and ideas that cause us to feel disconnected, and increasingly doomerish. Why does it feel like making plans (and following through) is more uncommon now? What are the powers that be that see us craving real connections with others, and prevent us from chasing them? Artificial Intelligence does much to try and enhance access to consumption through its promise to effortlessly generate infinite content that is 80% good; but pretty soon, many of us will realize we want that 100%. We want the human touch. The human feel... that connection to the world and humanity that is hard to describe. You can't throw a cost at sacrificing those things to multiply our output — because in my view, they're priceless.

We should go in with an open mind. We should fight against disorientation, and acclimate ourselves to the things going on around us. We should be willing to accept and learn about all the positive impacts of AI too, and intentionally adjust to this new world of ours. But we should also talk about it. Connect over it. How in the hell else are we supposed to figure out for ourselves what things matter to us most? We have to find them. And I believe we'll do it through reading, actually talking to one another about this stuff, and by embracing curiosity and a willingness to open our ears, yet disregard the noise. That resonate with you? If so, I'd really like to go out for coffee and talk about it, or hopefully see you subscribe to get emails about these blog posts. Cheers, fellow Zoomer or otherwise!

-Hudson

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"By signing up, you'll get access to the full archive..." Is what I would say if I had any paywall stuff. Down the road, maybe... but for now, nothing extra is available — enjoy all of TCZ's free content, and watch as it grows! As you can probably tell, this is the very beginning of this thing.

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