"Clarity. Something a scatterbrain like me always seeks. To know with certainty the path I want to lead. To be able to proclaim boldly my career of choice.
My stomach churns when someone pops the passion-prompt: if you had zero limitations, what would you do?
Um, I'd do EVERYTHING. Dance, write poetry, travel, model, snap photos, write songs, learn to code . . . and the list goes on. There isn't one thing I'm utterly in love with or that I want to stick myself to for life. But, when you reach a certain stage of adulthood, the demand to "choose a path" becomes oh so real.
But I'm a "choose your path" rebel. I haven't been able to figure it out thus far, and I believe that more and more so, we don't have to choose.
So I didn't. In 2010 instead of choosing a life path, I decided to simply focus on the next project I felt strongest about, and knock it out the park. My project was to publish a poetry collection, something I’ve wanted to do since I started writing at age 10. Although I’m interested in many forms of expression, writing a book just seemed the most put-together idea at the time. So I started writing. And writing. Four years later, the book project turned into an entrepreneurial journey that led me starting a small business and driving across the country on a book/workshop tour.
The process of writing the book helped me understand that just because I chose one career focus (a writer), it doesn’t doom me to just sit behind a laptop clicking away for the rest of my life. Choosing one project granted me a vehicle to explore so many facets of business and art I would have never got to try had I just sat back wondering which passion to pursue first.
To produce the book I became a writer, editor, publisher, and marketer. To prep for my book tour, I became a crowdfunder, venue-booker and travel-planner. Along the tour I was a workshop facilitator, photographer, and road-tripper. Hard work? Yes. But in this process I have never felt so alive, so purposeful, and so clear. It wasn’t that I gained clarity on what I wanted to be when I grew up but I became clear on what I wanted to feel while I’m living and working. I plan to seek out this feeling in whatever I do.
There is no box anyone can put me in, and just because I chose a convenient title for myself, choosing a path doesn’t have to be one-dimensional. As I continue to find ways to live a multi-passionate life, I hope to inspire others to see that there are no limits to the complexity and beauty one can bring into their life and work."