When I was growing up, I wanted to be something different each year. An astronaut. A veterinarian. A Dancer. A doctor. An actress. A marine biologist. A civil engineer. The list was long and quite varied in scope. I thought that would change when I was in college, but I still didn’t know what I wanted to be. So I majored in what I liked doing: musical theatre. One of the reasons I wanted to be an actor was so that I didn’t have to choose just one thing to be. I might play a lawyer in one role, a mom in another, a cowgirl, a showgirl, a fairy. Once, I even played half of a cow — the back half! I was always learning new things and experiencing new perspectives.

After college, I was a dancer, then an actor, then a graphic artist, then a paralegal. Then I went to law school and became a lawyer. Finally, I had “one thing” I could be. And like acting, practicing law provides me with the opportunity to be different in each matter: to learn a client’s business, or learn about an entire industry, or practice in different venues. But even that was not sufficient diversity. While practicing law, I became a certified health coach, taught legal writing in law schools, began blogging about health and wellness, and started my freelance writing endeavor. Clearly, I STILL didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

And I’ve felt kinda bad about this. Shouldn’t I be able to focus on just my legal career? Luckily, I found this TED talk by Emilie Wapnick and I now know it’s not only ok, but good, that I am the way I am. She calls herself, and people like me, “multipotentialites.” She says a multipotentialite is someone “with many interests and creative pursuits.” She accurately describes our strengths: our ability to learn new things quickly, our ability to synthesize various sources and kinds of information into a cohesive and understandable new idea, and adaptability.

Now I can be happy that I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up! Are you a multipotentialite too? Enjoy yourself!