On Being Career Multi-Passionate (and Finally Letting It Be Enough)

On crossed paths, creative tension, and choosing an honest second act

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be multi-passionate in my work.

For most of my life, I picked a path and followed it. I was good at that. Focused. Reliable. Capable. But the longer I worked, the more I realized that the moments I loved most were never confined to a single lane. They lived at the intersections. At the crossed paths.

When my passions collide, my work gets more interesting. I get more interesting.

Early in my career, I worked for an international travel and language company. On paper, I was learning to be a team leader and manager; teaching, motivating, and problem-solving. But alongside that, I was traveling, learning how the travel and tourism industry actually works, and soaking up experiences that quietly shaped me. Paris, especially, lodged itself deep in my bones.

Toward the end of that chapter, I was also put in charge of overseeing building renovations for the company. That felt oddly familiar.

My mother and my grandmother were both interior designers. I had worked alongside them throughout my young life, absorbing the industry almost by accident. Design, aesthetics, spatial thinking, those instincts were already there, waiting patiently.

In that one job, I was touching leadership, travel, business operations, and design. A multi-passionate life, hidden inside a single title.

But I worked a lot. I traveled a lot. And I wanted a family.

So that job had to go.

When it was time to choose my next move, I picked up two of those threads and started my own interior design business. That choice made sense. It was practical. I had mentors. I had industry access. And that career carried me through many years, challenges, and reinventions. It was meaningful work.

Now my kids are grown and on their own, yay, and suddenly time has opened up again.

And with it, possibility, and often a sort of creative tension…

Being multi-passionate can feel exhilarating, and sometimes it feels quietly disorienting. I often feel like I have my hand in too many pots at once, unsure which one I should stir first or next. Not because I lack focus, but because I genuinely love all of them.

Writing, in particular, can feel like a guilty pleasure. I love it deeply, even though it does not neatly pay the bills, and I know I am not alone in wondering if anyone is really reading it at all. And yet, I keep returning to it, because it feels essential to how I make sense of the world. Other times, I become completely absorbed in creating something tangible, a course, a Paris itinerary, an offering shaped with care. When I am in that space, I can happily let the other pots simmer for a while, not because they no longer matter, but because there is real joy in staying present with one act of creation and imagining someone else enjoying it as much as I did making it. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing too much. I’m tempted to put myself back on a “safe path.” Back into a box. That box feels familiar. Responsible. But it also feels small. And not very authentic.

To make myself feel less scattered, I sometimes organize my passions into neat buckets:

• Paris and travel

• Design and aesthetics

• Writing, publishing, and sharing what I’ve learned

• Building ideas and systems that help others

• And lately… AI, because it lets my multi-passionate brain actually function at speed

AI fascinates me not because it replaces creativity, but because it gives me leverage. It lets me do more of what I love, more efficiently. It helps me think bigger without burning out.

What still challenges me is visibility. Reaching an audience. Believing, on brave days, that someone might actually want what I’m creating. (But that’s a whole other article.)

Then there’s age.

Am I too old to take this leap? Too late to follow the threads that were always there?

In strange economic times, at an age when I’m supposedly meant to be thinking about slowing down or retiring, the world tells me to be careful. To be safe. To tread lightly.

But my heart tells me something else.

This feels like my moment to jump.

Not recklessly, even when it feels a little reckless, but honestly.

It’s not exactly regret, but I do wish I’d realized sooner that my most authentic working self is multi-passionate, independent, and quietly tenacious. I wish I’d been a little more fearless a little earlier.

Is there enough time left?

We never really know how much time we have.

So with that argument settled, I keep going. I keep choosing courage over comfort. I keep doing the work that feels alive. And I hope, deeply, that the back half of life holds its own version of success.

One that feels like mine.