> For me, I'd often have these ideas of things I wanted to try, or do, or challenge myself with, and then for some inexplicable reason I'd never do them.
I think without a mentor or point of reference for why or how you'd go about doing something like that, it's just a completely abstract domain, much like software is to anyone who hasn't spent a lifetime coding or figuring out how computers work. The mental health work and the video by Craftyarts seem like the perfect timely combination to allow for peeling back those layers, literally and figuratively, further allowing curiosity to be actionable.
I've been doing that a bit with electronics, and a recent example that seems similarly daunting for me would be watching the end to end process of building a custom keyboard pcb. At first it seems like an immense rabbit hole, but dedicating a bit of money and time incrementally is insanely rewarding in aggregate, moreso the further away from your mainline discipline it is. I tend to avoid these until I have a specific challenge in mind.
The seed of interest question was framed poorly, but it was related specifically to the latex mask subject, and I guess I was just curious if there were any adjacent ideas that might be worth exploring, since you do seem to have an interest in vaguely related areas
Adjacent ideas: 3d printing - I think it is cool but I'm not into it myself because it would require more time for me in front of a screen and working with digital tools. But, there are a lot of things to be explored here. One idea is digitally scanning a analog sculpture and then 3D printing the mold for it. This would be huge as you could make very complex molds and they'd be essentially perfect. And then when your mold broke down you could just print another one. No need to work from a master sculpt.
I have a friend who made me 3D printed keychains for swag at events. He embedded NFC chips in the keychain and this links to a linktree on my website. Coming up with cool swag like this could be something to explore. People found them really cool and it was a relatively simple thing to do. I'm sure there are some wild things 3D printing could be applied to for things like this.