Permission to be a multi-passionate black creative

“The sooner you stop denying the fact that you’re multi-passionate, the happier and more successful you’ll be…” Stephenie Zamora

Hey sis! Last weekend I accepted a title or an understanding of myself that would/will allow me to create and finally live my life according to my personal mental wiring – Being Multi-passionate- instead of trying so damn hard to fix my head on a singular path or career. I am deciding to give myself permission to really just be me and explore the paths that my passions take me on.

At 29 and being someone who is a big fan of some level of comfort and predictability (#taurus), this doesn’t exactly seem like the most logical approach but funny enough, ever since I mentally gave myself that permission – I have been feeling much more inspired and excited about my possibilities and my future. Yes, a future that might be as foggy as a British dock in the early mornings, but I don´t feel afraid to walk through it regardless, to discover what will be as the fog subsides, one step at a time.

Being raised to explore rather than decide

I was raised in a house of hustlers and makers, my mom and dad explored multiple paths of entrepreneurship in their early years. As immigrants in a foreign country, it wasn´t always out of passion but rather out of necessity to create their own paths of making a livelihood. This required them to be creative and explore multiple paths. Also, recently, after many years of being fully employed, my mom finally decided to jump the edge again and become a freelancer while she explores other paths of self-employment and more fulfilment for herself too (super proud of her!). This all, I use as a form of assurance (comfort in moments of slight panic lol) that it is possible and I shouldn´t view it as a scary thing.

Growing up, I was really lucky because my parents never really enforced a path on me – my mom was just happy if we found something we loved doing that could sustain us – That is a lot seeing as I was raised by African parents who had struggled to give their children a better life, especially my mom. Even though my mom always aimed to give us the best education she could afford as well as invest in the hobbies we picked up here and there – she never pressured us towards anything particular, which gave us the freedom to explore. This lead me on a journey of curiosities; I played the piano for a while, picked up a guitar lesson here and there, designed and made clothing, amateur yet serious counselling for friends and family, got into painting and drawing, writing short stories and poems in my free time– some things were just for fun and I later realised that I wasn´t as passionate about everything as I thought. Yet others stuck and I continued to juggle my time between them. To be honest, this is also an approach I want to bring to my own parenting one day; to expose my children to different interests but let them know that it´s up to them to choose what they do with those experiences.

Education and finding a career

I went to university and got a BA in the Arts titled (Sustainable/ Responsible design and business) I found out I loved creating more than I actually wanted to be a fashion designer per se – the fashion part of it didn´t really resonate with me but the creating of concepts, visualised ideas, the creating from a sustainable perspective really intrigued me and still does. I later did a masters in IT titled Digital innovation and Management where I wrote my specialisation on the subject of digital activism and empowerment titled “Digital empowerment of women: Sexism, Racism and Capitalism” #intersectionality. This is also where I totally fell in love with the holistic perspective of intersectionality when viewing social issues – Intersectionality is right at the ally of my multi-passionate wiring and so is being holistic/ the bigger pictures and the small details within.

This inspired a whole new way of viewing my existence as well as my approach to problem-solving. – In this field I got to use my analytical and problem solving, data and research loving side as well as my creativity. I actually really enjoyed writing that thesis because I got to fully use my inner wiring. I also decided that I would go travelling while I wrote it, you know, why not add more to the plate! It turned out to be one of the most enriching experiences of my life and it gave me a taste of the life I wished t create for myself – work, joy and life balance: I would write in my early mornings, have skype meetings with my supervisor and then explore new places in the afternoon and evenings. It was super dope! And I still managed to deliver a great piece of work if I do say so myself. This all proved that it was possible!

Yet when I was done with my masters, got back home in Copenhagen from my travels, I felt a bit confused because I connected to so many parts of me and I saw value in many of my passions but I didn´t actually know how to totally mesh them into one thing aka career and a title. Something I could label my LinkedIn profile as and get hired in.  I felt like I needed to choose or at least let go of somethings in order to make a serious living.

When I sat in an interview for a big tech company on a cold day, wearing my sisters navy blue I-am-a-serious-business woman-pants that we had already agreed to share if I got the job, snuggled in with a white tailored businessy shirt- I felt like I looked the part, I felt the part  yet during the interview, the part that really lit me up was when they were talking about relationships, personality types and interpersonal problem-solving – I just got so excited about it – which was sad because this actually had pretty little to do with the position itself.

After the interview, I imagined myself there; walking those icy cold blue glassed windows and freakishly clean environment, day in and day out. The girl that was part of interviewing me was actually quite nice and human looking – So I felt less intimidated, yet I knew that probably working there would mean hiding and keeping all the colourful and quirky outfits for the weekend. I would have to keep the full me for the weekend and that put a little sunken feeling in my belly. Still, I guessed this was what being an adult meant: I got the degree, now I needed to get the job and be successful or else all those years of study would be useless (lies! no such thing as a wasted education/knowledge).

What I know for sure (yes mama Oprah)

When feeling confused, it is wise for us to sometimes go back to our earliest knowledge of ourselves. For me, I knew from a young age that I would love to work for myself, doing exactly what? I didn´t know, just something that felt like I made a good difference and that I didn´t hate. The problem actually wasn´t that I didn´t have any ideas, but that I had too many and that I had paired them all with a limiting belief that if it sounded like too much fun/easy, I probably shouldn´t be doing it. I needed serious, validated job options – So, I kept looking for jobs I wanted but didn´t really love – except for the security they promised. After university, I was also in a long-distanced-relationship, so we needed a plan for us to be together and one way to make that a reality was me trying to find full-time employment. A job that paid well to get an apartment and be able to sustain my partner if he came to Denmark. At some point, I felt like I was becoming desperate and anything that paid well would do – it gave me a perspective of myself I really learned a lot from. Job hunting (and the followed rejections) really really brings out the shadows in you – your sense of worth, your identity when you no longer hold a proper title in society aka being unemployed for long periods of time.

Anywho! Scroll back to a few days ago, when I finally said “f-it – I am just going to try and follow my passions instead of trying to fit in somewhere or to choose”. After learning more about other multi-passionate people and “slash careers” in general, I realized that although I had many interests and passions- they were all in a cute corner of themselves- at least the core ones were all focused around conscious and intentional living. For now – here are the slash careers/passions I will be fully embracing the next coming months perhaps even years as my stars align.

• Artist and Creative (illustrations, designs, style, art exhibition, content creation)
• Writer (blog and novels, poetry, submissions)
• Holistic healing and living (coaching, education, podcasting)
• Researching and sharing ( self-education, all my curiosities, decolonization, activism, inspiration and motivation for others to align with themselves too )

And so it begins

When I embarked on this journey of Magic 3.0 May, I was willing to become a new person and while what I have discovered about myself isn´t necessarily new, my approach to it however is –  I am going to embrace and give myself full permission to be multi-passionate- colourful, playful, serious, creative and practical – I am going to allow myself to be me and even though I don´t exactly know clearly where all this will lead me or any full  outcome – but I reckon I would like to give it a go now rather than later – and for now, that is all the magic I feel I need.

So sis,  stay tuned, as there will be some changes made around here and perhaps other platforms too – changes allowing of myself to be fully and not just on the weekends. To embrace myself whole and not in fragments and I hope in doing so, I can inspire others alike to also do the same for themselves. My hypothesis is that life is fuller when we work with who are instead of against it. While yes, there might be challenges but there are also challenges and struggles when we choose to fight against our true nature. At least when we choose our own path, we will be struggling following something that is aligned with us and who we are. Something we believe in. I imagine the success of such a conviction also tastes ten times better and sweeter too!

If you also find yourself being multi-passionate or at least wanting to take a more explorative approach to life, please do share how this process has affected you or where in the process you currently are. I would so love love to be a part of a little multi-passionate tribe!

Wherever you are in life, whether you are also a multi-passionate, specialist or somewhere between or nowhere – I hope whatever labels you choose to apply to yourself bring you closer to your truest magic- that one unique way of existing, that only you can fully do. May life find you passionately blooming in whichever direction it finds you enchanted to follow <3

love and light