The Multi-Passionate Dilemma. Wanting to do everything all at once.
Day 10 of what has becoming evening musings!
It is day 10 of my 30-day Substack posting challenge, and it’s currently 8:30 pm. I’m only just sitting down at my laptop, and I was about to make an excuse not to post anything tonight. I’m too tired, I don’t have the energy... and then I remembered this challenge I’ve set myself is meant to help me stretch, and excuses don’t support that. I also remembered that I have over 60,000 words written since turning 35. Over a year’s worth of writing that I get to share with the world. So, this is my offering tonight — thoughts on what it means to be multi-passionate. Enjoy!
I thought my word was Multi-potentialite, but I think it’s Multi-passionate — or maybe it’s both!
I’ve been trying to keep up with the cool kids by diving back into posting on Instagram after being fairly silent for two years. What a ride that has been. If you think you’ve mastered the art of self-love and completely silenced that inner critic, nothing brings the reality of that to the surface quite like posting on social media. You can’t hide. What if nobody likes it? Does it look good enough? Does anybody even care? The urge to compare becomes so strong, and despite teaching hundreds of women tools to navigate this, nothing — and I mean nothing — makes me abandon my tools as quickly as social media. What can I say? It’s a work in progress.
I’ve realised that, over the years, my account has been many things: vegan recipes, political activism, humanitarian work, and about 20 variations of coaching, including relationships, body image, self-love, and so on. What it’s never been is completely me. It’s always been a niched-down version of me that has never felt right. The shoe has never fit, and I’m starting to understand why. I can’t be niched down. As a multi-passionate person, it’s impossible for me to narrow myself into a single niche. The very idea of niching down makes me want to run.
So, I joined a 21-day challenge to see if I could get myself comfortably posting on social media again. I won’t lie — it’s been tough. I’ve spent far too much time thinking about what to post, when to post, and then hours analysing what I’ve posted once it’s hit my feed. I’ve felt the sting of rejection when likes haven’t flooded in, and even worse when people have unfollowed me. I’ve listened to coach after coach telling me to niche down and speak to a single pain point for a single audience. While I see the value in this, I’ve never been able to do it before, so what makes me think I can do it now?
I want to be a writer, podcaster, coach, homesteader, retreat leader, mother, gardener, chef, bookshop and café owner, editor, and humanitarian — all at the same time. You see my dilemma.
I’ve been trying to niche myself down, but nothing has felt right. First, I went for “Business Coach, helping women launch and scale their own freedom-based businesses,” but that didn’t feel right. Next, I tried “Mindset and Business Coach, helping female entrepreneurs with strategy and mindset,” but that also didn’t fit. I’ve tried using AI, I’ve downloaded every “nail your niche” guide I could find on the internet, and I’ve tried on multiple bios, but none of them have worked. I’ve followed the methods, listened to the podcasts, and still, what I should be doing isn’t working. It’s felt soul-destroying until I decided: fuck what everyone’s telling me I should do — I’ll do what feels right.
Do what feels right.
Whenever I’ve thrown logic to the wind and followed my intuition, it’s led me to magical places. I am a multi-passionate person, and there are other multi-passionate people out there like me, struggling with the very same things. I’m riding the waves of being 35 like a duck out of water, and there are other women who feel the same. There are women out there reflecting on where they are in life, and how it might not match what they had envisioned. There are women facing their fertility for the first time, feeling like a kid at a new school. This is what makes me unique. This is what makes me me. My divorce, my engagements, my businesses, the countries I’ve lived in, my humanitarian work, the projects I’ve started, the ones that have been successful, and the ones that have failed — they are all my superpowers.
What I’ve landed on, for now, is Multi-passionate: embracing life beyond 35. Come for the mindset tools, stay for the journey. Rewriting life’s narratives through the art of reframing. While it still doesn’t feel 100% me, it feels closer than what I had before.
It’s funny, trying to box ourselves into something digestible for social media. It makes us unrelatable and out of reach. The accounts I love the most are those that are 100% unfiltered and raw, yet I’ve been trying to package myself into a pretty little box, complete with a ribbon. My overachieving, people-pleasing self has got it all wrong — but the good thing is, there’s time to make it right. I don’t want people to look at my account and think I have my shit together. I don’t. I don’t just want them to see the happy relationship and carefree spirit — I want them to see the challenges of trying to buy a home at 35, to conceive, to create a sustainable business, and to finish a book. This is what’s real.
Multi-passionate or Multi-potentialite — it really doesn’t matter. I’m a 35-year-old woman trying to find my self-expression.