WTF is a multipotentialite? (What do you wanna be when you grow up?)

Because unicorn is not an acceptable answer

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Is pretty much a question that haunted my childhood. As a very young kid I wanted to be a vet. When I was 12 I wanted to be an actor (pretty funny considering my paralysing social anxiety and stage fright), then I went through a whole bunch of other phases. Often “what do you want to be when you grow up?” is phrased as a cute question to ask kids so grown-ups can have a silent giggle at their adorable aspirations of being a firefighter or an astronaut. But how about if you still don't know at 16, at 21, even in your 30s?

This is really how I feel about things. I have a lot of passions but one has never presented itself to me as “the one thing” I want to do. Some come and go, some stay forever. I have studied a few very different topics at college level but I never found one I loved enough to stick with. I think a lot of people think of me as flaky when actually I just have a lot of different interests. And seeing as “unicorn” is not a viable job title, it's left me out in the cold somewhat.

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The term “multipotentialite” has been coined for someone with a wide variety of interests and strengths. These people might often be described as “faddy” or “flaky”. And of course there are a lot of people who just flit from thing to thing when they get bored. But for me, I've always had a lot of the same core interests, and often they seem to conflict. I am a spiritual, meditating yogi hippie type who also has a strong interest in life sciences, geology and astronomy. I believe in a whole bunch of crunchy stuff people might label “bullshit” and yet dive into texts about astrophysics and the biology of cetaceans with gusto. These two seemingly opposite sides of myself have always made sense to me. Sometimes my cynical scientific side comes out, sometimes my inner dirty hippie takes the wheel.

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So what happens if you can't narrow down your career path to “one thing”. What if you like many things and have many interests? Well to me that seems to be the way more of the world is going. Once upon a time you went into a trade or a school and often you would stick with the same company your entire life. It was not uncommon at all to have a family trade or for kids to go into the same business as their father. Once upon a time that made total sense. Things are so different now. The economy is volatile and new technologies are being developed so fast, everything is in a state of flux. It seems in some places you need a degree even to get an interview for a low level job, and people are chopping and changing careers regularly because they have to. Companies are quite happy to lay off people at the drop of a hat. Things aren't the way they used to be.

We also hear from the online money making gurus that “multiple income streams” are a wise way to go. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, and these days it seems making money online is no less secure than a 9-5 at an unfaithful company that might just sack you as soon as the going gets tough for them. Maybe if you have a lot of different interests that could lead to potential moneymakers for you, then that's actually a good thing in this modern world. Chances are most of us will face a career change at least once in our live, maybe many times. The key is to keep moving forward, however slow your roll is.

And yet the older mindset “what do you want to be when you grow up” still exists. Who knows how automated things may be when the current crop of kids reaches adulthood, how many industries will be all but extinct.

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For years I let this “jack of all trades” persona hold me back. I let it lull me into the idea that I was stupid, fickle and absolutely unable of holding a good job. I have had a wide variety of jobs in my life, all of them have been completely crappy in these sense that they were all low wage and exploitative (not in a sexual way, just “unfair wages for unfair work” in Game of Thrones terms). I thought I wasn't good enough for a career or a trade, and I found myself at 30 working with a bunch of people who were either all teenagers or had zero aspirations (I'm not judging them for that, it's just that I've always had aspirations just no faith in myself to go for them).

I'm done with all that. If it means I have to make sub minimum wage doing various different “income streams” online until I find one that strikes gold, either in money terms or in the way that I've found something I think I can do forever, then so be it. “I'm finished being everybody's butt monkey” (Xander from Buffy, circa 2001).

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Now that I am starting to make money online, this insecurity is coming out in other ways. I look at some of my favourite Steemit authors who are so set on the one or two topics they stick to and watch them produce article after article on the same thing. And I wonder “why are they so sure of themselves about what they want to write about, and why am I not?” “Why haven't I picked a niche already?”. I just need to keep reminding myself I've only actually been blogging a couple of weeks, and that (hopefully) what I want to write about will present itself to me with some time and some trying on of various topics.

I'm thinking about writing another article about the whole multipotentialite thing in regards to Steemit. And yet I also feel Steemit is a really good platform for multipotentials. I see science students writing amazing short fiction, homesteaders producing beautiful art, travellers writing philosophy articles. I think the key lies in combining a couple of your interests into one main theme. Right now I'm all over the joint and I apologise for that!

I feel in today's world it's absolutely a good thing to have a wide variety of interests. As long as you get deep into these topics and don't just stay “surface level”, I think being a multipotentialite in our society today is actually potentially a great benefit. As long as you are capable of getting out of this mindset that there's something wrong with you because you didn't figure out you wanted to be a doctor at age 15 and then rigidly stick to that all the way through college and medical school. It's OK not to have “one path”, whether you are 18 or 30. Maybe you're meant for one career path that will come to you in time, maybe you are meant to chop and change regularly to keep things interesting, or maybe you are meant to combine several different interests and make your own career out of it.

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The only way you're going to know is to follow what you love. Making time for what you love is the key to opening those doors. How long your working hours are and whether you have other commitments like kids are going to affect how long you have to spend on your passions every day. But if you have time to read random articles online, you have time to delve into something you love or try that thing you've been putting off because you're too scared. Time management is key when you are interested in elebenty bajillion different things, otherwise you end up just spinning your wheels...trust me, it's taken me a good long while to dig myself out of the esteemless pit I found myself in.