Making Sense of a Jack-of-All-Trades Journey
Is your creative path all over the place? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
Welcome (or welcome back!) to Multifaceted, a weekly newsletter about finding delight and direction in a creative life made up of many different interests.
If you’ve been around the creative block a few times, you might not fully understand how you got to where you are now.
It’s normal to feel a little lost along your creative journey. We all do from time to time. But if you don’t make an effort to reflect on your path and how far you’ve come, you can easily fall into a funk.
A multifaceted life is never going to be linear. In fact, I think it’s safe to say it’s impossible to achieve the richly varied creative life of your dreams by waddling off in a straight line.
But, if you take a quick look around, you wouldn’t know it. Most of the time, you’ll see chronological LinkedIn bios and curated Instagram feeds that suggest success is borne out of a succession of logical events.
But these polished profiles leave no room for the messiness of real creative experience. The stop-and-start experimentation. The back-and-forth between projects. The don’t-know-what-I’m-doing-yet phases.
The stuff we’re all navigating every step of the way.
If you like to oscillate between projects or juggle multiple things at once, you might feel like what you have to offer is less valuable than the work of experts in the same disciplines who’ve had super-clear paths to creative achievement.
Here’s the thing, though: The only reason it looks like they “made it” in a neat, orderly fashion is because they’re able to explain how they got to where they are now in a neat, orderly fashion.
In other words, they made their path make sense.
You can do it, too — even if you’re not some famous, outwardly successful person at the forefront of the creative world. The process is part self-reflection, part personal branding, and all celebrating the cool, creative stuff you do. And it’s an ongoing process that evolves along with you.
Over the next couple of weeks, I want to spend some time focusing on how to make sense of a multifaceted, jack-of-all-trades creative journey – from figuring out why you want to gain clarity in the first place to landing on labels that actually serve you.
(I’m in the middle of redefining my own creative identity, so I’m sure I’ll share snippets of that along the way, too.)
For now, let’s rewind to the beginning and find out why you’d want to chart your course in the first place.
Who needs an explanation? (Is it them, or is it you?)
Raise your hand if you’ve ever gotten caught up worrying about what other people might think.
Heyy, me too! 🙋♀️
Over time, I’ve realized that whenever I’m worried about how other people will judge me and my creative background, it’s because I’m judging myself.
In those moments, I don’t feel confident about where I’m at. I don’t understand how to connect the dots and present myself in a way that makes sense. It all feels messy – and it makes me want to curl up in a corner when I desperately want to put myself out there.
I’m sure you’ve been there, too.
The thing is, we need our experiences to make sense to ourselves first. Then we can confidently explain them to other people.
Ideally, that wouldn’t be so complicated. But what if you reflect on your experience and feel like you’re unfocused or lost or all over the place?
That’s the voice of your inner critic talking. It’s more critical of your creative life choices than any disapproving relative or dismissive teacher you’ve ever known.
Your inner critic will tell you all kinds of lies about how your jack-of-all-trades journey is too disjointed to explain – and too messy to matter.
But your path does matter. Understanding where you’ve been is a big part of figuring out where you’re going next.
What’s the real problem?
If you catch that critical voice flaring up while you look back over your experiences, there’s probably a deeper issue at play.
See if any of these questions help you pinpoint what’s bothering you:
Are you having a hard time summing up what you do because you’re not where you thought you’d be?
Do you feel like your long and winding trajectory is preventing you from accessing new opportunities?
Are you concerned that acknowledging your multifaceted journey will make it hard to fit in?
Do you worry that you don’t have enough experience to stake your claim on a creative discipline?
Have you fallen out of touch with who you are, what you’re doing, and why?
Chances are, you’ll need to uncover and address the internal conflict or confusion before you can create a story you’re content with.
Dig deep and have a heart-to-heart with that inner critic of yours. It’ll tell you everything that’s wrong, even if you don’t ask!
From there, it’s up to you to let go of the self-judgment that’s holding you back. Refocus your energy on building out a bio you’re proud of – and one that can propel you onto bigger and better things.
Next week, we’ll take a closer look at how to do just that.
Until then,
So interesting to find you and your posts! I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently… I often get ooh I can do this… until the next thing comes along! I want to start a substack but even struggling with what that would be!
I would say many successful outcomes in business and other endeavors follow a non-linear, messy path. I think of the phrase to encourage entrepreneurs: Ready....fire....aim!