Wholeheartedness and Doing What You Want

It's OK to Love All Over The Place

I really don’t know what I’m doing, but that’s not the scary part.

The scary part is that I don’t care that I don’t know.

After years of trying half-heartedly* to craft “a message” or “build a brand” (barf) and hating it, I have gone off the rails and it feels pretty amazing.

Vanessa Calls it Multi-Passionate

My friend Vanessa, who is a life coach, calls what is happening to me right now (and maybe you?) “being multi-passionate.”

I had been calling it names that were not so kind.

Scatterbrain

Mess

Everywhere

Can’t get it together

People told me this big lie and I believed it - that we need to decide what we are going to be and go all in on that and then shout about it on the Internet.

Another Way

The worst part is, I paid people to tell me this.

I took classes and did programs as I tried to build what I thought was a blogging business, but then blogging changed, so … a small business?

I still don’t know.

But every podcast and book, every e-course and free course said “niche down,” and I thought - yeah - that makes sense.

People want to know what you’re really about, right?

But then here is the problem:

I am about … a lot.

A Love List

Here are the first 12 things I love, off the top of my head besides family and friends and caffeine and comfortable pants:

• birds

• pens

• sparkling water

• Monday mornings

• cats

• a very specific kind of lip balm

• basil

• sticking things to things

• gnomes

• songs in French because I don’t speak French so I can listen while working and the lyrics don’t distract me

• naps

• beeswax candles

Those are just 12 things I thought of or I saw - looking around. I made myself write them down quickly and not think too hard because recently, it’s occurred to me that it’s the thinking too hard that keeps getting in the damn way.

Getting It Right

And getting it right?

Forget about it.

I’ve spent waaaaaay too much time working on that.

Especially lately.

There’s nothing like a bunch of giant life changes all happening at once to get you in a nice perfectionistic brood.

Taking Off the Handcuffs and Just Getting All Up in the Pudding

Ok, so what happens then, if I decide to be am a multi-passionate person, and share that decide to share that?

What’s the WORST that could happen?

(I usually hate that question, because ANXIETY.)

But seriously?

Group whiplash?

You all run away?

That would suck, but you know what also sucks?

Feeling stuck and mired and held back and shoved into a teeny little box.

There’s no room in here.

It’s hard to breathe.

I want to bust out like a bean sprout.

What If …

What if I told you that in December, I went down a rabbit hole and learned to make a zine?

(For those of you who did not spend the 90s wearing brick-colored lipstick and listening to Natalie Merchant, a zine is just a tiny little homemade magazine thingie.)

And it was so much fun.

I’d asked my oldest what he wanted for Christmas and he said - will you teach me how to take really good care of my skin?

And I said - oooooh …

That’s what I said …ooooohhhhh …

Because instantly an idea popped into my head to make a zine sharing all my favorite skin care tips and routines and potions and advice.

Skincare - I’m pretty confident with that.

And then the challenge of making a zine?

How fricking fun would that be?!

And so I did it, and he was delighted and guess how many more zines I’ve made?

Zero zines.

Zippo zines.

But I Don’t CARE …

I don't care that I took the time to learn to make a zine, and then decided I was done with zines for now.

My kid was happy. It was fun and special.

In a world that tells us productivity and efficiency make us worthy, I know spending three days messing with paper and margins and font sizes for a non-business project seems like a waste of time.

But what SHOULD I have done instead?

They Got It Wrong

You know the famous Mary Oliver quote - the one asking “what you will do with your one wild and precious life?”

Do you know it’s from a poem about watching bugs?

Mary Oliver never said create a startup. She never said you should hustle 50 weeks a year so you can go someplace with a pool for two weeks and come back tired to a life you hate.

She never said buy a bigger house, or drive a newer car or dress your children like tiny hipster Victorians and put them on the Internet so everyone knows you have parenting figured out.

She said stroll through the fields, kneel down in the grass.

But then people took her words and made them a call to action, and got the message all wrong:

They told us:

“Time is running out, and you must make this life matter - give it meaning. So go make a million dollars and go Keto and wake up before you go to sleep and for Heaven’s sake - win at something. Get something really right. Immediately if you can, but tomorrow will work too.”

And so a lot of us forgot that in another poem, “Sometimes,” Mary Oliver actually gave us instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

OK. That’s More My Speed

And so I will tell you that for the last six months, I’ve been building a business, and figuring out a lot, and that’s good because I like heat and groceries.

But I’ve also decided that it’s OK to stop with the learning and growing and striving and reaching and settle in for a minute with my candles and watercolors and birds and words.

That’s what I want to do here, in this space - share what unfolds when you stop trying so hard ALL THE TIME.

I hope that’s OK. I hope you’ll stay with me.

Because it’s kind of freeing, isn’t it - the not knowing?

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* There is another way to think of “multi-passionate,” and it goes like this:

A tired man goes to visit a monk after a long day and long life, and says, “I am exhausted.”

The monk says, “you know, the antidote to exhaustion isn’t necessarily rest.”

And the man asks “Well then what is the antidote?”

And the monk says: “The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.”