A Love letter to The Scattered Ones: Is being multi passionate a gift or a curse?

If You’re Scattered, You’re in Good Company

A few years back, someone looked me dead in the eye and said, “You need to pick a lane.” I was in my thirties. I’d already done more pivots than most people do in a lifetime, and I was still hearing it. Still doubting myself because of it. But here’s what I know now: the person giving that advice wasn’t built the way I’m built.

And if you’ve heard variations of that same message, if you’ve been called scattered, unfocused, or told you need to commit to a niche, this is a love letter to you.

The Applebee’s Years

I used to work at Applebee’s in my twenties while I was in college. Not my fondest years. I was a waitress, winding through sticky tables, carrying plates of reheated pasta to people who were already annoyed before I got there. Every single shift, I could see the bar from where I stood. The bartenders were laughing. Chatting up strangers. Moving with this easy confidence that the rest of us in our aprons definitely did not have. And they were making twice the money.

So I set my sights on becoming a bartender. And I went and got it.

That’s been my whole life. Not the Applebee’s part. The I saw something I wanted and I moved toward it part. I’ve been in plays. I’ve started businesses and watched them end. I’ve joined organizations because I wanted to mentor, taken random trips to the Poconos for an all-women camping trip, built things from scratch, broken bonds that stopped serving me, and made connections I would not trade for anything.

Every single time, somebody had something to say about it.

You’re all over the place. You need to pick a lane. You don’t know what you want.

And for the longest time, I let that land. I made myself wrong for the way I moved through the world. I looked at every unfinished project like evidence of something broken in me.

The Epiphany This Morning

I was listening to my headphones this morning as I was getting my kids ready for school . Something I do daily as a way to bring joy to my morning routine. This morning, it was a human design masterclass. For those of you who are not familiar with human design, you def need to look into it. Start Here! It gives you the deepest understanding of who you are and how you operate like a personality test on crack. I digress….The host of the class was talking about Manifesting Generators, which is what I am, and describing how MGs look to everyone on the outside. Scattered. Inconsistent. Like they can’t commit. And then he said:

You’re not scattered. You’re designed to skip steps. You accomplish in weeks what takes others months. You’re meant to move fast, pivot when something stops lighting you up, and circle back when it’s time.

I paused the class immediately to explain this to my husband who ( is one of the ones who calls me scattered lol.. still love him though ) He nodded in fake agreement..the kind you give when you are more interested in your coffee than the conversation but you want to be nice. I kept listening intently because hearing it named, hearing someone describe the thing I’d been apologizing for as the thing I was built to do, felt like finally being given permission I didn’t know I was still waiting for.

If you haven’t looked into human design yet, go find your chart. It will give you so much clarity around the way you operate. And if you’re a Manifesting Generator, I hope this lands for you the way it landed for me.

What the Scatteredness Actually Gave Me

Here’s what I know about us, the multipassionate ones.

We don’t let grass grow beneath our feet. We feel a desire rise up, full and insistent, like a sound turned all the way up, and we move toward it. We don’t sit with “what if” or “but how” or “what will people think.” We act. Sometimes to our detriment. Sometimes to our tremendous benefit. Always as a lesson.

And the experiences that come from that? I have been in rooms I had no business being in. I’ve sat in a ball gown at the Houston Attorneys Association gala, surrounded by people I never would have met if I’d stayed behind that Applebee’s counter waiting to feel ready. I’ve made friendships with no logical origin story, no straight line from A to B, just two people who found each other because they were both following something true.

That is what the scatteredness gave me.

But Not Every Impulse Deserves Your Action

There’s a difference between following your urges and chasing what you saw someone else do on the internet at 11pm. I’ve done both. A lot…twice this week actually . The difference is in the body before it’s in the brain. A genuine desire has a particular weight to it. It resonates, it persists, it comes back even after you’ve tried to talk yourself out of it. Comparison shopping for someone else’s dream feels different. Hollow. Like wearing a coat that fits fine but isn’t yours.

When the next desire comes up, before you move, ask yourself: Where is this coming from? Does this resonate, or does this distract?

You will know. The truth always has a distinct vibration.

Find Your Through Line

Here’s what I discovered when I finally stopped being ashamed of how I move: even through all of it, all the pivots, the different rooms, the things I started and the things I released, there was always one thread running beneath everything.

Creativity. Every single thing I’ve ever chased has been a creative urge wearing a different outfit.

That’s your anchor point. Not a niche. Not a business model. The one thing that connects all of your so-called scattered ideas, the thing you would defend on a hill, the thing that remains truest about you even as everything else evolves. Find that thread, and build everything around it.

Tips & Tools for The Scattered Ones

1. Find your through line. Write down every major thing you’ve done, explored, or been obsessed with. Businesses, hobbies, roles, random Tuesday night rabbit holes. Look for the connective tissue. What theme lives underneath all of it? That’s not your niche. That’s your north star.

2. Build a discernment practice. Before you act on the next desire, pause. Not to talk yourself out of it, but to feel where it’s rooted. Is this mine, or did I borrow it from someone else’s highlight reel? Impulses that come from your through line will feel different from impulses that come from comparison. Learn the difference in your body, not just your head.

3. Let your brand reflect the through line, not a box. When you build a business as a multipassionate person, anchor into who you are, the way you think, the thread that runs through everything, rather than forcing yourself into a category you’ll outgrow in six months. Your audience doesn’t follow a niche. They follow you. Give them something to follow.

4. Stop finishing things for the wrong reasons. Completion for completion’s sake is not a virtue. Some things you started were meant to teach you, not to launch. Let yourself close chapters without performing guilt about it. You’re not abandoning things. You’re extracting what you need and moving with intention to what’s next.

The Permission Slip

Forget those who don’t understand your scatteredness. Forget those who don’t understand your passion. It is not your job to explain your evolution to people who decided who you were before you did.

You’re not all over the place. You’re building a life with more texture, more experience, more range than most people will ever let themselves have.

Creative direct it like that on purpose.

Tell Me in the Comments

What’s your through line? The one thing you can trace through every version of yourself, every interest, every pivot, every obsession? Drop it below. I want to see what’s been running underneath you all along.