To be honest, I had a completely different topic planned for today (“How I Optimize My Day to Support a Side Hustle”). But a different thought stream—whatever this is—came out instead.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the different phases that our careers take on. The side hustles. The side passions. And how to navigate our multiple passions without becoming (or at least feeling like) a scatterbrain.

A multi-passionate career will look different for each one of us. It will even look different for every individual person depending on which season of life they’re in.

These new musings have most definitely stemmed from my recent pull towards writing and the proceeding internal battle between my business brain and my creative brain.

Even just this week, I had a moment of doubt after my business brain wanted to know exactly how these newsletters “fit” into my career. Hello! News flash Sig! They don’t! And that’s entirely the point!

I’m entering a very new phase of my life. One in which I am an artist. A writer.

It’s a phase I’m not very familiar with. It feels unworthy of the time I’m dedicating towards it.

Writing when I could be making money?

(Thanks capitalist conditioning!)

These conversations have come up with friends, too. How our passions can make us come alive, and yet our business brains will immediately try to fit them neatly into our current business.

To combat this, I’ve been re-reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic on repeat. A favourite of mine, and a staple for anyone in the creative phase of their life.

“I promised that I would never ask writing to take care of me financially, but that I would always take care of it — meaning that I would always support us both, by any means necessary.”

What a beautiful promise to make to your art!

Writing has always been something so precious to me. Something I would never want to taint with financial obligations. Which also means, unfortunately, I never prioritized it.

Last week, I finally gave myself permission to be as dedicated to my art as I am to my income-generating activities.

I hope you take this newsletter as permission to do the same. To dedicate your energy to a new passion, regardless of how experimental it may currently be. 

I also hope that you take this newsletter as permission to stop chasing some grandiose mission to save the world. That time will come.

But your tiny seed of passion, the one that feels so insignificant in this moment?

It is the most worthwhile thing to pursue.