A Glimpse into the Life of a Multi-Talented Individual

In 2019, for the second time in less than two years, I quit my nine-to-five job in pursuit of other passions. It took me a while after then to discover the true reason though. It wasn’t simply that I had other passions I itched to lend my talents to, it was that I am a multi-talented individual with a multi-passionate take on life. 

This realisation and embracement of a life where one has and pursues multiple passions are at the heart of the exploration we are about to undertake, as we glimpse into my life through some of my experiences. Although, I’m fairly certain you may relate to them more than you’re presently aware of and thus jump-start your own discovery.

Meanwhile, I didn’t use the word ‘quit’ lightly. More on that shortly.

A struggle with identity and being a multi-talented individual

I focus on my experiences in the professional world for context in this piece. Trying to align me with the notion of a career path and defining myself professionally was a pain point for me at that time. I’ve always known on a subconscious level that I am a lot of things. Yet, it was only recently that I began to fully acknowledge what that really means for me as a person navigating a life that sometimes includes operating in professional spaces.

It wasn’t even the part about me wanting a job I enjoy and would afford me some free time to do other things (can I get a *chuckles in fallacies*?).

It was the part where I began to fear I could ‘enjoy’ quite an array of jobs and that might mean I don’t have a “focus in life” and couldn’t build a career path…? Making me a professional with no place in the professional world?? A Jane of all trades and master of none?? Does it really? Otherwise, what does it then make me??

In 2019, for the first time, I vocally (in my head and on paper… Sorry, on Google Docs) used the phrase “multi-talented individual” to attempt a description of myself, as well as try to make sense of the attractions that multiple professional endeavours held for me. It felt good because it was the closest I had come to form a core understanding of what I had been suspecting about myself up until that period but couldn’t confirm.

This is where I let you know that this piece is a looooong one. I can’t promise anything else, so keep reading to your own delight. Oh! Insight! It’s a rather insightful piece. Yes.

Heavy on the ‘multi-talented individual’ part

Multi-talented individual was a term I coined for myself as a placeholder to start drafting this article about my exploits (yes, exploits) in professional capacities, at the time. A year and a pandemic later, I’m on TikTok and someone used the term multi-passionate individual to discuss the subject matter, and I gleefully lost it. I had just learned that of course having multiple passions and potentials was a tangible thing! On top of that, the term ‘multi-talented individual’ was also being used. My mind was blown. 

Because think about it – How are you a person with multiple talents, and then you believe you’re to settle for one passion in life?

And so, I was re-inspired to re-visit the draft and write this account of some of my experiences as someone who decided to embrace her multiple talents and explore different passions. It was mainly supposed to be a curation of the ways I applied myself professionally in the space of a year to underscore that it was in fact possible and encourage similar folk to tap into their multi-ness. However, a lot of things happened or didn’t happen, and here we are. 

This article will now capture an overview of my professional journey from circa April 2019 until this moment when I have fully come into myself as a “multipotentialite”; multi-talented and multi-passionate. Multipotentialite is another word I learned. Bear with me. 

To kick off; a backstory on a multi-talented individual.

The early-ish days

Between 2007 and 2014 when I graduated from university, I was a professional dancer. I LOVE to dance, and I didn’t want to do anything else. Couldn’t quite picture myself doing anything else, even throughout my studies. I couldn’t wait to finish school and advance my dance career. The passion choke! 

(Note: For not-so-cool kids like us that happen upon this piece, kindly refer to urban dictionaries online for the meaning of “e choke” to get your frame of reference for that last sentence. Kisses and hugs)

After the first leg of my NYSC programme, I got a job doing something else I also am ridiculously passionate about – This. Writing.

Not like this though. More… ‘Serious’. Not to say that writing blog posts, films, songs, potential novels, or poetry are not serious. I mean, when I was much younger, I did quite a bit of creative writing, and having also written as an adult that knows what creative writing actually means – *insert maniacal laughter* – we know these things are serious!

It’s just that it was journalism. So, maybe we should settle for… serious.

A path to career paths

It’s necessary to point out that when I started this job, I could no longer dance professionally. Well, to be honest, my final year in school slowed that down for what was supposed to be a temporary situation that sadly turned out to be rather permanent. I still tried dancing for fun and fitness until even that fizzled out. Needless to say, there went that passion, right? 

Also, I needed a ‘real’ job. You know? 

It was at this job that I discovered what I ultimately came to know as content creation and production, albeit not in the way I knew of it before or that I knew after. Journalism was the beginning of a different kind of professional journey for me – THE famously infamous 9 to 5. Here, skills were unlocked, honed, grew, and created a sweet foundation to keep expanding. Pretty awesome stuff. 

Over two years later, my yearnings to pursue performance art and also create other kinds of content resurfaced and overwhelmed me. I had to get out there!

And I did.

An unemployed multi-talented individual?

I was out here in these streets for a minute, enjoying my freedom but panicking about my loss of security and yet excited about my imminent future in freelancing with all the time in the world to still dance and explore other things. Then, I got an offer for a second job.

It looked promising – a suitable job description and an acceptable structure for working hours. I felt this was it! I could do it all with this job (because I still needed one of those). Additionally, it was – as I thought then – an advertising agency, and I had always wanted to create ads so badly!

I was mistaken. Great job, great opportunity to learn greatly in the digital marketing field, but not great for me to be creative, and certainly not as accommodating of other passions as I hoped. Plus, I certainly wasn’t creating ads. 

A few months into it and please feel free to refer to the paragraph about yearning and overwhelming feelings.

Allow me to quit once again…

In April 2019, after a year and some months as a Content Producer, I finally handed in my letter. And once again I #quit and jumped right into the world. As I noted earlier, however, quitting wasn’t exactly about leaving one job for another or for none. 

I quit trying to contort myself into spaces that were either not necessarily for me, whether or not I had or could develop the talents to exist within them. I quit trying to juggle pursuing my other passions and improving them with any job that practically refused me this liberty. I quit suppressing my imagination. I quit longing, worrying, yearning… I quit ignoring my otherness.   

It was scary. It was thrilling. It was overwhelming. It was rewarding.

Here we go!

Now, the point of this long, fascinating story you’re reading is to share my account of my experiences as a once again unemployed-independent-but-is-open-to-freelancing professional from April 2019 till 2022 when I’m writing this piece.

The hope is that even as I showcase my experiences using diverse skills and range around content, content development, and content production, you can at the very least take solace in the fact that as long as you’re ready, you can also explore life as a Multi-person. 

My aim is to talk about what I think it means to be a multi-talented person. My experiences with work opportunities, the notion of time and self-management, self-development, surviving financially, diversifying my crafts, my growth, and my learning. And, also whatever else can be glimpsed from the ensuing account.

Ultimately, there is no advice in this article, and that’s on caveats, I beg of you. 

At the very most, you can relate with and even share your own experiences, and we can trade war stories in the comments or elsewhere on social media. Let’s do it!

Multi-talented individual – Take 2019

April

As soon as my last day rolled around in April, I caught a flight. You know, I thought to relax a little before I come back to face real life and also use up my leave days. Except we’re feeling nice, we take every single one of those over here no matter what. 

This entire period, I was excited, anxious, hopeful, optimistic, apprehensive, and aggressively (for my standard) seeking to establish and reactivate relationships that might lead to potential opportunities.

Additionally, I was quite willing to do jobs for reduced fees just to expand my portfolio as I looked to create a base for my content creation clan to take off – Thiaplicity Aesthetix.

So, it didn’t come as a surprise to me when I saw myself taking an interview with another digital marketing agency some days later. I regretted it in the sense that it was a waste of time. However, as with how I view everything, it had its benefits. In this case, content that you can read about here. It was a mess. 

I tried again some days later with the ‘startup fam’. This guy was a trip. Also detail the events of this particular interview here. I was just glad there was no traffic that day as I left the location. Got home, carried my bags, and headed to the airport still shaking my head. 

Meanwhile, before I even left my job, there was an opportunity that came around that involved developing content and producing a series of video content for an international academic institution, and it was looking good on paper. Around the same time, I executed a content writing opportunity for a new investment platform. 

Things weren’t looking so scary anymore as I took off, unemployed as hell. 

May 

By the time I came back in May, there was still no progress on the video series opportunity. It turned out to be roadblocked. But, no matter… I kept it moving. I turned to another interest of mine – music. The idea was to pursue a career in singing/songwriting. That one is a long story. In the meantime, I applied for residencies and tried to pick up from where I left off with a couple of scripts I had been writing (another long story).

In addition, I was approached to be a Content Director for a TV show. It sounded good. So, literally, the next day after I returned, and having barely slept, I went to have this meeting. Almost a week later, I got called in for another interview with another digital media agency, and a few days after that, to wrap up the month, I had yet another casual interview for an entrepreneur after which I was done!!

I started to also feel like I was giving too much energy to interviews for jobs in the nine-to-five sphere when I literally quit my previous jobs to get away from those. I knew it was a fear driving me, I mean, our mind is built to help us survive so it was doing its work. But, I had to snap out of it. I was going to “do it afraid”.

June

June came around and I was feeling even more unemployed than before. The contract for the TV show was posing a major hiccup to proceeding as planned, one or two other potential projects were hanging, music was giving very much dead end, and I was struggling with my blog. Really gut-sinking stuff. 

On the other hand, a friend at the time had approached me to collaborate on a business project that they were developing with a friend and business partner of theirs, and that was looking pretty neat. Let’s call it “The Biz” for future reference. Someone else also came to me with an opportunity to develop and manage content for a popular Nigerian comedian, and I applied for yet another fellowship. 

One cool thing that happened though was I co-wrote a feature-length script with one of my close friends. We’re pretty excited about it and still looking for funds to get it done.

Let’s see. 

July

The most that happened this month was “not much”, to be brief. The meeting with the popular comedian wasn’t a good match for me (he was unsurprisingly one of those people that had a bit to say about ‘Twitter feminism’, for instance). Next, I got an interesting offer to be Editor for a novel geopolitical platform. After, I designed a concept for a popular Afropop artiste, and later, I applied for even yet another fellowship.

September

Nothing new happened at all in August. In September, the colleague that brought the comedian opportunity came with another one to develop a marketing campaign for a renowned biscuit company. We spent some days and nights on this one. But then, these types of clients do what they do – Ghost for no reason (and possibly with your ideas). Lol.

Moving forward, talk of some potential gigs in December was sounding good from the corner of The Biz. it seemed we would be producing a number of live music concerts for some of our Afropop stars. I was excited about these. I started designing concepts.

We ended up doing three big concerts in December, and that wrapped up in 2019.

Multi-talented individual – Take 2020

This year for sure did not follow the format of the previous one. 

I decided I was going to use it to focus on working on my filmmaker portfolio, so I spent the first couple of months planning to enter a film competition. I wrote, produced, and directed a micro-documentary and film for it in March. We all know what came after this. #Lockdown

Less than nothing happened during this period, except for when I worked on a social media plan for a fashion personality and her store at some point. Meanwhile, I didn’t get any of the fellowships I applied for. My documentary did make it to the final stage of the competition though. #Yay

This year wasn’t looking too promising in terms of work opportunities and other plans so far. Thus, as soon as the fallout of the pandemic became more apparent, I put my energy into starting a business. Good thing that took off. 

In November, however, I got an opportunity to work a full-time job as a Content Manager with a startup e-commerce company. Exciting stuff. Not the full-time part, but the job itself. And not just because I needed some steady income at this point. Also, it was fully remote for me, so I figured this would work fine. 

So, back at a nine-to-five was where I was between November 2020 and April 2021. Because, yes, I quit again in April of 2021. 

Multi-talented individual – Take 2021

2020 pt II? 2020 extended? 

Work was going great until it wasn’t. My business was going through a rather ‘interesting’ period which also was taking its toll on me. A lot was happening around the world. We were all stressed!

At this point, I had experienced different nine-to-five structures and I liked none of them. It had become rather clear that it might not be the right fit for me, no matter the arrangement. Then why did I keep going back? 

Besides the super obvious economic factor (duh), I realised that each time I got a new job. I felt like I was going to do something different, and that sort of helped ease me into the idea of taking on yet another full-time gig. So, the variety of the jobs took precedence over the fact that they were still full-time jobs that would demand I work within certain constraints, no matter the arrangement we agreed upon.

So, I decided to stop looking for full-time jobs. I couldn’t complain that I was getting stuck over and over again while opening myself up to that by dedicating a fair amount of my energy to looking for a “stable income”. 

While I never say never, I know now, nay, I’m absolutely certain that I’m not open to full-time jobs the way that they prominently exist now with presenteeism management and performative working and sensitive recruiters. I know what I want in that regard, and I’m very much on “if it comes, it comes” vibes. A number of opportunities have come and because of the aforementioned features and others, I wasn’t interested. I was appreciative, but not interested at all. 

Multi-talented individual – Take 2022

I’m still in the business I [luckily] started in 2020, and happy and grateful for it because – *insert dangerous laugh* – it would have been rather difficult, as the gigs have been few and far in between. But, thankfully sufficient to still be able to live my best multi-life, even as I look forward to developing other ones and pursuing other careers.

I’m still passionate about dancing, and all the other things I don’t do [professionally] anymore. It’s my life.

I no longer wish to align myself with any one career. To be honest, never really did. A job is a job is a job! The thing is, I’ll just do it really well. Just not well enough for it to overtake my life.

Whew! Did this resonate with you? Do you recognise this trait in yourself? Are you trying to do something about it? Already doing something about it? How is it going???????

Signing off with wanting so much to hear from you in the comments and everywhere else!