I am! I get really interested in something, dive in full force and then….yup, I’m bored. And then I’m off on to another thing that has me totally consumed…and then, bored. Wash, rinse, repeat. I used to wonder if I just had a shortish attention span. Or maybe I only liked pursuit, not mastery. I love visioning and making and implementing, but HATE maintaining. Maybe I’m part raccoon, as in “Oh, bright shiny thing…I must take it home.” Maybe I just like learning, not doing or keeping. Whatever the reason, I know that I have many interests, but none seem to hold my attention long enough for me to be able to say, “Hey, that’s my main thing. That’s me! That’s what I’ll be when I grow up.”
I’ve called myself a serial polyenthusiast, which is kinda like a serial monogamist – or maybe more accurately, a serial bigamist, because I rarely have just one true passion going at a time. The thing is that they just don’t last very long, because once I hit that point where I can say, “Okay, I get this. I got it” then the challenge, and therefore the allure, disappears.
Turns out, there are lots more people like me out there. One name for us is “multipontentialites”, and we have a really important role to play in the world. And that role does not require settling for just one thing! Check out this TedTalk by Emilie Wapnick:
https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/emilie_wapnick_why_some_of_us_don_t_have_one_true_calling.html
