I originally published this post on November 17, 2011. It still gets lots of traffic, even buried down in my blog feed, so periodically I pull it out again. While I’m away at Jazz Camp, gorging on one of my many passions, while temporarily ignoring the others, it felt like a good time to repost.
If you’ve ever struggled with having “too many” passions and interests, if you’ve ever been labeled “ADD” or a “dilettante” or a “flake,” because you’ve done so many different things (and you like it, dammit), this one is for you.
Enjoy! xoMelissa
I don’t know how old I was when I first learned the name Leonardo Da Vinci, but from that moment on I dreamed of being a Renaissance person.
I don’t remember taking steps to become a Renaissance person; I only remember the longing. And the feeling of utter impossiblity.
The younger Melissa just kept trudging forward with her life, going to school, following her nose. And feeling somehow… inadequate that she wasn’t the Renaissance person she longed to be.
You probably know where this is headed.
I was, of course, a Renaissance person all along. In my childhood, teens and 20s, the truth is I simply didn’t have the experience to know what my passions were. And that yes, I was hard-wired to have a lot of them.
Looking back, I can see the first inklings of the strength of my bliss-diverse, polypassionate disposition when I was a dance student at the Juilliard School in New York.
A few years before that, when I discovered dance, I fell instantly in love with it. For awhile I devoted myself to it almost entirely. It just seemed what I had to do. Partly, perhaps, because we live in a culture that lauds specialists rather than generalists. And largely, no doubt, because classical dance is a very demanding taskmaster, requiring hours of commitment on a daily basis, which simply doesn’t allow much time for anything else.
But one day at Juilliard, one of the modern dance teachers decided to lecture us on the need to focus on dance exclusively, if you want to succeed at it. He proudly shared that he never had any other interests, and he left no doubt that this was the right way—the only way—for a serious dancer to be.
I looked around the room and saw my classmates nodding their heads in passionate agreement.
I, on the other hand, was burning with a different kind of passion. I was outraged. Livid. The utter notion that I would have to give up, say, my interest in the Humanities (I was the only dancer in my Juilliard class who actually went consistently to the academic classes—and liked them), or drawing, or anything else for that matter, made me so angry I wanted to spit.
That should have been my first clue.
Yet although I spent the next dozen or so years pursuing a range of different interests (even my bachelors and masters degrees were both interdisciplinary majors, for goodness sake!), though it should have been obvious that I’m hard-wired to be bliss-diverse, I always had the nagging feeling that there was something wrong with me.
On the one hand, I longed to be a Renaissance person… but couldn’t identify myself as such. On the other hand, I simply couldn’t limit myself to a solitary focus… and beat myself up for it.
In my 30s, thankfully, my self-concept started to shift. I finally began to “get it” that maybe I was designed for multiple interests. It was clear I would never be happy sticking with one area of focus, and rather than fight this, I began to accept it, embrace it and work with it.
At the same time, my mom and my friends started referring to me on their own as a “Renaissance Woman.”
Having that outside perspective helped me see my (sometimes annoying) propensity to want to do seemingly everything as a positive feature. I was also entirely tickled and delighted that the great longing of my youth had, in fact, actually come true! My family and friends were proof: I was, after all, a Renaissance person!
I may not have the talent or historical staying power of a Leonardo, but that is entirely irrelevant. The fact is, I’m a Passion Pluralite. Bliss-diverse. Multi-passionate. What Barbara Sher, author of Refuse to Choose (among many other books), calls a Scanner, and Margaret Lobenstine calls The Renaissance Soul in her book of the same name.
It was a huge relief to figure this out. But the issue remained of how to deal with it.
Being bliss-diverse can be enormously rewarding, but also presents some significant challenges. How does one balance and juggle all those various passions???
For a long time I had no real strategy. I tried to do everything I was interested in all the time, which is, of course, impossible. I took on too much, and yet nothing I took on got the level of attention I wanted to devote to it.
This left me wrung out, and continually frustrated.
I remember a moment in my (ahem) late 30s (yes, I’m embarrassed to admit it took that long) when I had the revelation that maybe I could try limiting my focus to just a couple of things at a time.
That didn’t mean, I clearly acknowledged to myself, that I was dropping any of the other things forever. Just that I wasn’t going to try to do everything at once.
As it turned out, focusing on just a couple of things didn’t feel like enough to me, so I expanded it out to three. Or four… And ultimately came up with a model that has worked quite well for me ever since. What I now refer to as:
The Stovetop Model of Life Design for Passion Pluralites
If you’ve ever cooked a full meal (Thanksgiving dinner, anyone?), you know that there are only a certain number of tasks that you can keep track of at any one time.
The typical stove has four, maybe five burners, but rarely more than that, and there’s a good reason for this. A stove with, say, 20 or 100 burners would be impossible for one person to manage. Imagine that poor cook running around like a madman!
But four or five is feasible for any one meal.
You can have soup simmering and pasta boiling on back burners, while you occasionally stir the sauteeing mushrooms and focus on the omelette on the front burners.
When the pasta’s al dente and ready to serve, you shift your focus from the mushrooms and eggs to drain that pot over the sink. Then it’s time to put the fillings in the omelette and flip it closed.
You get the picture. Of course at any given moment you can only give your full attention to one pot or saucepan, but a skilled cook can keep four burners going at once quite handily, shifting pots from front to back burners as necessary.
There may be many more dishes in this particular meal (dessert [or several!], appetizers, salad), but those ingredients stay in the fridge until the cook has some free attention and is ready to deal with them. One of the pots on the stove goes in the fridge, and the ingredients for the chocolate mousse come out for mixing up.
Approaching my life and creative passions with this Stovetop Model in mind was a game-changer for me.
The urgency and frustration I felt for so long dropped away when I realized that I get to do it all, just not all at once.
A plethora of different types
Barbara Sher describes no fewer than nine different general types of Scanners in her book, Refuse to Choose, some of the sequential variety (moving from one passion to the next over time), and some of the cyclical variety (following more than one Bliss at all times).
Personally, I’m a bit of a blend of both. Like the type Sher calls the “Serial Master,” I get tremendous satisfaction from the pursuit of mastery, and tend to gravitate toward new challenges after climbing the learning curve to my satisfaction. But unlike the Serial Master I also tend to keep my passions in the rotation rather than dropping them completely to move onto something entirely new.
In that way I’m more like the type Sher calls the “Sybil,” preferring to keep a full stovetop of passions at all times, and rotating pots when it feels right. Which seems, for what it’s worth, to typically be every 3-9 months or so.
In 2011, for example, starting on February 1 that year, I made my visual art a big focus. I initiated my 15 Minutes a Day standard for playing in the Creative Sandbox, started my ArtSpark newsletter, and in that year I made over 150 finished pieces, making it n the most prolific period or art-making in my life!
In fact, at the end of 2011 I produced a book of 100 my ArtSpark artworks, which you can preview in this nifty widget (or click here to view it larger).
Time to move the pots around on the stove…
Where 2011 was a year of making art, 2012 and 2013 were/have been much more about writing. Sometimes I feel a little “false guilt” that I’m not making more art, but as I shared in Your Big, Bold, Creative Life Academy session this week, in the module around overcoming overwhelm and freeing up time, the sensation of guilt frequently has nothing to do with actual guilt.
Have I committed an offense against anyone by writing more and making less art? Um, that would be a no. I sent an almost-daily newsletter of my ArtSparks out for several months of 2011 and 2012, and the subscribers to the ArtSpark newsletter might have been disappointed when I put the newsletter on hiatus. But their desires to continue receiving the newsletter are not more important than my needs to take care of myself, and put my time and energy where my priorities lie.
As a bliss-diverse Creative, the most important thing is to follow your Bliss(es), not do what you’ve always done to please everyone else. That is a sure recipe for burnout!
So I do my best to practice what I preach. The ArtSpark will come back from vacation if and when the time is right. Or not.
All in good time. There’s only so much room on my stove, after all. But you can be sure I’ll keep you apprised of what I’m brewing up.
(Make sure not to miss one juicy morsel—sign up on my mailing list in the form at the upper right.)
Are you a Passion Pluralite? Do you have a multitude of interests and sometimes have a hard time juggling them? Tell me if my Stovetop model resonates for you at all, and what other models you’ve found helpful.
PS – Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
I love this! I think I am definitely a Passion Pluralite. I look forward to delving deeper into this and to pondering and trying out the Stove Top method. I think perhaps I am also a “Sybil” type. It’s great knowing that there is someone else out there similar to me:-)
There are lots of us, Amy. A lot of hyper-creative folks are Passion Pluralites. But in our specialist-lauding culture, those of us who are Bliss-diverse often feel like we’re the only ones. It can be a huge relief to discover that we’re actually a very big tribe. 🙂
I’ll be writing more about being Bliss-diverse in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! And thanks for commenting. 🙂
Thank you! Thank you! Alas, someone knows where I “live”! After many years of hearing “When are you ever going to figure out what you want to do?” (And thus, feeling shame; because I always wanting to try EVERYTHING! Like there was something wrong with that?) It took a lot of work accepting that my life was “like a tapestry” and a “multi-colored rainbow”. That my creative flow…(More like a periodic volcanic eruption) was more than ok; it was a gift! Thanks for the “stove top” analogy, it puts things in a perspective for “sorting” out projects. Currently, I have at least 5 projects going at once; and it can be a challenging juggling act. Thanks, again for a wonderful article! Enjoy your next project! Linda
You’re so welcome, Linda!
One of the wonderful things about the internet for me has been the discovery that we Passion Pluralites are everywhere! Barbara Sher, who wrote Refuse to Choose, suggests that it was the advent of the arms race in the 1950s (when suddenly the US felt the need to have laser-focused science and math specialists) that changed the cultural perception. Before that, people like us were considered “well rounded” “Renaissance people.” Then almost overnight, we were seen as silly, irrelevant, irresponsible.
The problem has never been with us. And thankfully, the pendulum is swinging back. (See Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind.)
Yes, your creative flow/eruption is a gift! Something to be cherished. 🙂
Wow, this sure resonates! I always wondered if something was wrong with me, because I couldn’t choose between art, music, or writing because I love them all. Society tells you that you cannot excel at one thing unless you focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. I’m glad I’m not the only one facing this.
Isn’t that funny, how we’re expected to choose? “What [one thing] are you going to be when you grow up?” Yes, for some people that’s the right path, but definitely not for us! We Bliss-diverse folks would get bored out of our skulls if we had to stick to one thing only.
You are definitely not alone, Jennifer. We are everywhere! 🙂
Wow, this just blew my mind! So very true. I MYSELF love to explore new mediums of art. I have so many ideas and things I would love to accomplish. That would be the hardest for me is to chose which one to start! But what you wrote of the stove top model, just makes total sense! I understand that we can only do so much, yet for me the hard part is finishing theme. I get so caught up with all these wonderful ideas, like my own book, my own line of home decor, my own hand bag designs, doing pottery, and lately is using art to heal other people as a work shop. My God so much to do and learn. I will try the stove top model. It makes so much sense. I as well refuse to choose! For many years, working for corporate America as a visual merchandiser and visual manager, I let others direct my creative path. Looking back, they never had an idea of who I was, no clue. All they kept telling me was, well do this and it will get you to this point, to then get to this other point and so on. All that did was get me so far out of what my true dreams were. I trusted these individuals, but I knew something wasn’t right. They were not placing me in the right direction. Wish I could decided to get out, long time ago. It took 2011 for the bucket to kick! Over 7 years people directing what was good for me, no more. Thanks for all these wonderful things you are doing!!! Laz
Good for your, Laz, for making big changes. It’s often so hard to know what you really want, especially when others have a big hand in your work direction. Hooray for moving onto your right path!
Hi Melissa,
Perfect timing for you to mention this blog in our RBBP chat last night. I had just had this exact conversation about myself with my dad yesterday. We decided I was an “integrated artist” or some such sort, hadn’t quite settled on a name to encompass my various artistic passions. Love the stove top imagery and the support that I’m not alone in my passion plurality lol.
Take care,
Susan
Hi Susan! So glad to see you here. I love “integrated artist.” 🙂
And you are definitely not alone in your passion plurality!! We’re everywhere… 😉
xom
Thanks again Melissa! Just love the stovetop model imagery and rotating turns of paying attention to what’s cooking. You rock! 🙂 Wish you weren’t on hiatus from your ArtSpark newsletter…anyway to look at past issues? Sounds like you and I have similar minds and your newsletter could really be just what I’m looking for to help me thrive!
Susan
Yay! I love rocking! 😉
FYI, you can find the ArtSpark archives here. Thanks for asking — you made me realize I oughta put a link to the archives on the ArtSpark sign-up page!
I was recently told I was shallow because I have a tendency to go so broad in my pursuits and not deep with one sole focus. I was shattered when I heard this. But it is true. And I’m glad to hear there are plenty more creative and self-loving ways to accept and embrace this about myself. Your stovetop analogy is brilliant and a helpful way to frame what I’m up to. Will also check out Barbara’s book. Thx for the tip!
It’s really a shame the way our culture misunderstands passion pluralities. You’re not shallow — you’re just wired differently from the person who said that, not to mention that it was a very discourteous, unthoughtful thing to say! Not only was that person wrong, they were downright RUDE!
Whether you call us passion pluralites, scanners, multipotentialites, multi-passionates, Renaissance souls, or anything else, I think the biggest problem we have is just thinking that there’s something wrong with us! Once you can accept and embrace your passion pluralite nature, learning to manage its unique challenges becomes really quite doable. 🙂
Hi Melissa,
I’ve been thinking a lot about this post since you wrote it (woah – a year and a half ago? really? time flies) Though it was good to see that other people too have so many pots in their kitchen, what has been keeping me feeling so smothered was that I felt like I had two completely separate kitchens (this is not including the kitcheonettes I call my new children). Then something amazing happened. I took on one more passion – an impulsive but compulsive* need to learn a brand new musical instrument – which you’d think would break the camel’s back, but in reality somehow got my other passions in line and got me to shut down one of the kitchens. That kitchen was one of my two businesses (stationery), and was NOT an easy decision. But the introduction of the banjo to my life has kind of reorganized my day’s schedule as well as sparked the general creative juices that I need in that particular kitchen (AKA quilting/Ketubah passions). Now I’m thrilled to have several burners on one stove. Sometimes those all relate to each other whether we realize it or not. Thank you for the metaphor!
Toby Simon
Hi Toby! Nice to see you here! 🙂
You are not kidding about time flying — sheesh!
I’ve been in that place with multiple kitchenettes, btw. Whew — hard enough with one, baby! Good for you for figuring out how to trim down, AND by introducing banjo into your life. That’s awesome!
I think when we find something that really lights our fires, it can sometimes make prioritizing a lot easier.
Keep cooking! And keep me posted. 🙂
xom
Holy moly. I don’t mean to make myself sound like the center of the universe, but I seriously thought I was the only one. And now I realize there is actually a NAME for people like me (bliss-diverse creative, passion pluralite!)? Like us? I am so, so thrilled to have found you. I will be following! Thank you so much for sharing this…
Yes, there are a lot of us, Danielle! More than you’d ever think, given how biased towards specialists our culture still is! I truly think that is going to change, though, as the ability to juggle multiple skills is going to become more and more important. (Check out Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, for more on that…)
So glad you found me! Thanks for commenting. 🙂
WOW, Melissa, you did again! There’s ALWAYS something that resonates for me in your blog entries -in fact, I’m afraid reading them is becoming addictive!- from being an owl trying to become a lark to going through a period of self-compassion, from having my hall cluttered for months with boxes of different items to sell or donate to finding publicly-made commitments are great tools to force/encourage me to make positive but somehow difficult changes in my life! And I’m sure that the further I’ll read, the more things in common I’ll discover!
Being a Gemini -my favourite excuse to explain why I love multitasking and devote time to pursue my many dreams and passions- and a keen cook, the Stovetop model absolutely resonates for me!!! I’m a Sybil type according to your article… and it’s nice to know there are so many people having the same life-style that there is even a name for it 🙂
We are clearly kindred spirits, Karina! 🙂
I don’t have the Gemini excuse. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to embrace my passion pluralite nature. 🙂 My stovetop model has been a lifesaver!
Wow, I didn’t know there was a name for me!! I feel like I have been given permission to do all my passions!! Yay! I have always dropped one passion for another thinking in my mind that was the only thing that made sense to do and then I felt empty in a sense..not knowing why! The power of words and connecting is amazing and life changing ! Like the others the “stove” analogy makes so much sense and I know I can cook ..so……!! Thank you !
Yes! You absolutely have permission to do all your passions! I’m so glad my stovetop model is helpful. 🙂
I am 71 and a few years ago it struck me tht I never stick with anyrhing long enough to be come proficient, an expert, a pro. Some things Idofr better thanothers but not many. Same with working. Life psychologist, socialworker. Fund development director, draftsman( noInever changed sex it just sounds better) communications etc you get it! It has not harmed me I am well rounded and i love what i created in beading, sewing. Cooking is pwehaps the longest art tjhpugh now shifting direction. After years in fabric I shifted to paper. Gave away the fBric collected for years and occaisionally sew. Have to say “je ne regret rien” its fun!
It has taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I will never be as much of an expert in anything I do as I would if I focused on it exclusively. But I’m a lot happier this way, and no regrets either. 🙂
Yes, I am exactly like that! I have many interests and I keep switching from one to another, and back again. Fortunately I don’t forget much, so when I pick up an interest again I start from where I left off. I like myself this way, and have used your “stovetop” method since I was a teenager, so I’m comfortable with it; but I think it drives my family crazy!
Haha! Yes, we have some control over driving ourselves crazy, but very little control over how our friends and family react. 😉
Dear Melissa, I hope camp was a blast. We are of the same tribe. I was immensely relieved to hear Marie Forleo use the phrase “multi-passionate” to describe women who have varied loves and pursue them full on. I really like your stove-top model too. I will use that. Many thanks, Suzi
Camp was amazing and wonderful, as it always is. 🙂 So glad you like my stove-top model, Suzi. Passion pluralites unite! 🙂
Yes yes yes this hits home. I have a family. I have meals to plan. I have dreams of creating a magazine. I have a goal of 200 paintings this year. I want to make a book of artwork/thoughts to use as Holiday gifts from our family. I am attempting to launch Greeting Cards. I have people asking me to create a course/class on my own analog planning system.
I know I need to choose a few pots. I know I need to microwave some things, slow-cook somethings, and stick other things in the freezer. I just can’t figure out which things.
I’m going to drive myself crazy, aren’t I?
Well, you’ll probably drive yourself *less* crazy if you use the Stovetop system. 😉 It’s sure helped me enormously!
There are so many things I want to do! I want to create a ukulele website, with tutorials of how to play my original songs. I want to dive full-time into Argentine tango. I want to dive full-time into improv. I want to dive full-time into painting. I want to write a book. I want to create a one-woman show. I want to create a multi-person show. I want to tour the country as a singer/songwriter/performer. I want to teach more in-person classes and workshops. I want to create more online courses (and have at least 3 courses I’d like to create in my head RIGHT NOW).
That’s just scratching the surface!
When I tell myself “No, you don’t GET to do that,” I just feel angry and rebellious, but when I tell myself, “You don’t get to do that RIGHT NOW, but you can do it later if you want,” it feels liberating, and allows me to pick something to focus on, rather than spinning my wheels in indecision. 🙂
This is amazing! I have felt so frustrated and overwhelmed by my many interests – like I would never be able to do them all, or like I was neglecting one if I focused on a different one. This Stove Top Model is inspirational! A breath of fresh air! Plus it’s great to know there are other people out there like this! I had no idea…
Glad it was helpful! And oh, yes, we are everywhere. We are legion! ?