You can be more than one thing

Imagine being told you can only eat one type of food for the rest of your life… How stressful would that be, it’s only the rest of your life! You’d spend all the time you have stressing about making this decision, settling without ever tasting the good stuff.

Life isn’t like this, despite what you might think.

Growing up we’ve always been asked specific questions such as,

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

We’ve been repeatedly told,

“Do what you love. Turn your passion into a career. You’ll never work a day in your life if you love what you do”

But what if so many different things excite you? What if you want to lead many different lives? What if you're extremely multi-passionate?

How do you define a life like that, in a world so set on defining everyone and everything? Personally, I’ve fallen into an unending cycle of attempting to define myself. Attempting to condense my passions into a certain ‘niche’. Because - "If you do that and make content around a particular niche - that’s how you’ll have a successful career.” As you may have heard once or twice before.

For so long I’ve been trying to find my ‘niche’. In that, I’ve found multiple things that I really enjoy, various career choices I would be satisfied in doing. A few different paths I could imagine, would be pleasing to go down. But how do you begin to go down just only one, when you want to take two or maybe 3 different routes?

Everyone talks about "personal branding", to define who you are, to make it clear as to why people should be invested in your brand.

I don't know your thought on this, but that’s freaking hard to condense into an Instagram bio.

We are all so very detailed, and intricate. Often a location, our vocations & occupations don’t say enough about who we are. Maybe you don’t see yourself as just those things, maybe you want to explore more or say more, but it won’t fit with your ‘niche’.

These are reasons which make people scared to start creating because they’re so fixated on fitting into a mold.

But what kind of brand is, a little bit of everything?

As a kid, I literally tried everything. Seriously everything, every week I was going to "be" someone different. I was a non-fiction writer & researcher, then I studied flowers for a week to be a florist, a fashion designer, an actor, a psychologist, journalist - you get it, there’s a long list. I was always curious, always keen to learn a new skill, but as a child, you get told there’s only one path. Choose one thing you want to do with your life, make your subject choices in high school in order to get into uni and that’s, that.

Don’t fall for it, you can be more than one thing. Actually, you SHOULD be more than one thing. Basically, my point is, I don’t have that ONE thing. That one passion everyone tells you to go after, full force, with tunnel vision. I want to explore many vocations and always live curiously. I always want to be chasing whatever gets me a little excited to try, to create. I've realized this limiting need to define oneself is so restricting.

John Green once said,

“Study broadly and without fear. Learn a language if you can because that will make your life more interesting. Read a little bit every day. But most importantly try to surround yourself with people you like and make cool stuff with them. In the end, at least in my experience, what you do isn’t going to be nearly as interesting or important as who you do it with.”

The next time someone asks you, what you’re doing or going to do with your life – just say,

“A lot, I’m going to do a lot.”