Yesterday, I had a conversation with a colleague, and I realized I sound like a crazy person when I describe my life. I am doing so many things. But, that is why I call myself multi-passionate. There is not one specific thing that I am completely passionate about.
And I know because I have been searching for my “passion” for most of my adult life. I used to think that I was broken because I didn’t have a passion. I know what having a passion looks like, my best friend is a writer, and that is her passion. Has been since we were young. She follows her passion and there is a fire in her when she does that really makes me jealous. I have always wanted something like that. I wanted to find that one thing that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning and keeps me working late at night. I wanted to find that one thing that I loved so that I “never had to work a day in my life”. But, I never could.
One day, I saw a talk by Liz Gilbert about following your curiosity, and that idea hit me like no other. She spoke about other people who never found one passion; they found many. They just did things that they were curious about and found many different things they could classify as passions. I don’t think I ever identified more with an idea than that idea.
So, I decided to follow my own curiosity. I realize more and more each day that my curiosity has a bunch of starts and stops and winding paths. I jump around a lot. I almost never follow a straight line. I will start things and take months to finish them because my attention gets drawn elsewhere. Many times, I am like the dog in the movie UP, stopping to chase every squirrel. Sometimes, it also means that I will start something and nothing can get me away from it until it is finished. I am a person of many contradictions, and it means my life is anything but linear or focused.
Back to my conversation with my colleague. I also realized that I don’t tell a story in a straight line or even a logical story format. So, my blogs and social media can be a little scattered, and I definitely don’t have any kind of “brand continuity” like all the social gurus want you to have. And I am ok with that. Perhaps my brand is the fact that I am scattered and all over the place. Perhaps, the people I am hoping to build a community with are also scattered and feeling like they are the only ones. Perhaps, they will find me “normal” and want to hang out. Because in the end, I am looking for my tribe. I want to build a community of scattered people who understand each other, can communicate with each other and in the end, support one another.
Welcome to my crazy ride and my scattered life. I hope we can help each other. I would love to know if any of you ever feel this way, let me know in the comments.
M 🙂