being multipassionate without losing your mind

on not being crushed by the fig tree

You’ve probably read enough essays and watched enough TikToks about Sylvia Plath’s fig tree analogy, so I’m not here to analyse what it means - but I’ll include it right here because Sylvia Plath did a great job capturing what I, and so many others I know, struggle with.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.

I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

What does it say about me that I’ve got half a dozen notes on my phone titled things like “dream jobs”, “jobs I think I would love”, “things that sound like dream jobs maybe should look into them more” with bulleted lists?

My sister always knew she wanted to be a musician, a non-negotiable passion. Some people have a single passion and grow up knowing that they want to pursue it no matter what. I was never that kind of person; instead I grew up with multiple passions following me around throughout my life, frantically diving into rabbit holes in different directions in waves of excitement and inspiration that led me to different dream jobs and non-negotiables. I never had a single thing I knew I wanted to pursue no matter what, because I was busy being pulled in ten different directions I feared I would enjoy equally. And it is a little scary, isn’t it? What do you do with that fear?

I’ve never really sat down and made a conscious decision saying: I will take this direction. I fell into quite a lucky and successful career in social media marketing when I spotted a pretty niche market opportunity in 2020 and launched a creative agency as a side-hustle, while studying at university. Did I imagine it would become my full-time career and would take me all kinds of places years later? Absolutely not. When I published my book about building unconventional careers last year, Google started displaying the category “Author” underneath my name. Before that I think it was “Entrepreneur”. One time it changed to “Writer”. Not sure how Google classifies these things, but it gave me a little identity crisis. I’m currently in this box and I don’t know how easy or possible it will be to put myself in a different box later if I feel like it. Feels like a very internet-age problem, where we have a lot more spaces that demand we define and categorise ourselves in a certain way to make what we do more digestible and easy to immediately grasp. The internet-age identity crisis.

I sometimes wish I was the kind of person that could confidently say yes, I WILL be this thing for the rest of my life, and that’s all I want to be. But the truth is that I feel so equally and overwhelmingly passionate about so many different things, and it always feels like I could choose to go a million different directions and unlock a million different lives that would all be as fulfilling and exciting. Sylvia Plath understood that this leads to decision paralysis because it feels impossible to categorise yourself as a multipassionate person and feel confident pursuing that one thing for a long time.

I’ve written before about how some of the most interesting and fascinating people in history evaded categorisation, like Richard Feynman. We tend to read books and watch documentaries about people who chose one thing and became incredible at it, diving deeply into it until there was nothing left, and these stories are fascinating indeed. But I am interested seeing more of the paths of people who did not easily fit into a box at all, people where it’s hard to describe to others what they do in one sentence. I’m interested in the practical elements of their story and of how they combined all sides of themselves to arrive somewhere where they are content and fulfilled.

So what do you do? How do you live a peaceful life in the path you have chosen without feeling a pull to other directions you’d be doing yourself a disservice not to explore?

I’m definitely still trying to figure that out myself. Right now I see two ways.

The first one is what Derek Sivers calls “don’t be a donkey”, in his book Hell Yeah or No. Sivers says:

Are you trying to pursue many different directions at once?

Are you frustrated that the world wants you to pick one thing, because you want to do them all?

The problem is thinking short term — assuming that if you don’t do all the things now, they won’t happen.

The solution is to think long term. Do just one thing for a few years, then another for a few years, then another.

You may have heard this story: Buridan’s donkey is standing halfway between a pile of hay and a bucket of water. It keeps looking left and right, trying to decide between hay and water. Unable to decide, it eventually dies of hunger and thirst.

A donkey can’t think of the future. If he could, he’d clearly realize that he could first drink the water, then go eat the hay.

Don’t be a donkey. You can do everything you want to do. You just need foresight and patience.

If you’re thirty now and have six different directions you want to pursue, then you can do each one for ten years, and have done all of them by the time you’re ninety. It seems ridiculous to plan to age ninety when you’re thirty, right? But it’s probably coming, so you might as well take advantage of it.

You can fully focus on one direction at a time, without feeling conflicted or distracted, because you know you’ll get to the others.

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year, and underestimate what they can do in ten years.

Think long term. Use the future.

Don’t be short sighted. Don’t be a donkey.

I like this approach because it’s a useful reminder that you can, actually, live a fuller and more varied life than you may think. We always think in terms of career path, singular. Not that often in terms of career paths, plural. There’s no reason to limit ourselves for life. Derek Sivers’ approach is quite refreshing to me because it allows me to think in terms of eating multiple figs, living multiple lives. I love hearing the stories of people who have done this and switched careers and life paths multiple times - I find them fascinating. Sometimes they’re so unrelated to each other, which is why they’re interesting; you never expect someone to go from being a physicist to a musician to an actor, but it is literally possible.

This also ties into what I think of as living life in seasons. Instead of striving for balance as the best thing to aim towards, there’s a lot of value in accepting and embracing different seasons of your life where you allow yourself to have tunnel-vision on one thing, and fully enjoy everything that entails for a while.

The second approach I’m exploring is more short-term.

Sometimes the issue is that we just haven’t taken the time to understand ourselves deeply enough to connect the dots. I’ve been actively trying to deconstruct what it is that appeals to me in my different passions and in all the life directions I wish I could follow. I’ve literally been asking ChatGPT to help me deconstruct the different elements and translate that into career paths or projects that I may never have considered. Let me tell you, some targeted research can be really helpful - I’ve learned a lot.

My favorite part of my job is when I get to work on the creative strategy behind marketing campaigns and brands; curating their visual language and creating moodboards to construct the vibe and the mood around something. I always joked that I wish my job could be making moodboards. For years, I also wanted to become a travel photographer, then a fashion photographer, then a magazine editor, then a cinematographer. What these all have in common is the love for storytelling, and often the emphasis on visual world-building. ChatGPT said something like girl, you’ve got degrees in Art History and in Strategic Marketing, you love brand strategy and building creative worlds, it’s literally called art direction or creative direction. And I was like Oh! Wait a second. Maybe you’re right. Maybe spending 4 years studying art history wasn’t random. Maybe there are jobs out there that I’ve literally never considered, that are full of all the everyday tasks that I love and feel engaged and inspired by.

So this approach is more about deconstructing everything you like and everything that you feel pulled towards, and actively trying to connect the dots. Finding the common thread between your many passions, and doing some targeted research to find out whether there are any paths out there that may include all of the things you love. And then once something sparks your interest, do a little deep dive, take a short course for free online, reach out to people doing that job, have a coffee with them, and ask them questions. The more in touch you are with yourself as you live and work, and notice what little tasks engage and inspire you the most, the more insight you unlock about what your everyday life could look like. Then it’s all about being strategic with the way you use all the tools and resources we have freely at our disposal today, to think outside the box.

There’s also great benefit in being multipassionate - some people call that being a generalist, and David Epstein wrote a very good book called Range on the topic. Unlike what everyone on TikTok is telling you, maybe you don’t need to pick a niche after all.

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So, how to be multipassionate without losing your mind? When I figure it out for sure, I’ll let you guys know. For now, this is everything on my mind - please let me know what you’ve learned through your own experiences, and what helps you navigate this. Would love to hear. 💙