Are Your Hours Spent Doing The Work Or Trying To Define It?

You get to choose

I’ve been stuck in this trap lately where I’ve turned it into my full-time job to figure out what exactly it is that I do (or like to do). I love creativity, mental health, content creation, community building, writing, reading, coffee, and podcasting. On any given day, I like some of those more than I like others. On my LinkedIn, I’m a writer and strategist. On Instagram, I’m a mental health creator and writer. On here, I’m a writer with a focus on creativity and mental health. On my podcast, I’m a little bit of all of the above.

Being a multi-hyphenate can move from feeling invigorating to feeling overwhelming very quickly and I’ve realized the switch happens whenever I stare at it too long. I stumble when I try to put myself in a single box or define myself under a single art form. On the days when I allow myself to just flow from one piece of content to the next, my videos go viral, my writing feels peaceful, and I sleep better at night.

If you’re a fellow multi-hyphenate, here are some tactics I’m turning to in order to help keep myself on track to do the work:

• My to-do list is only allowed to be 4 items long at any given time
• I have a brain dump list: this is different than a to-do list in that it’s not an action list for the next few hours of my life, instead it’s a dumping ground for the next few days, weeks, or months
• I work to curb cross-platform comparison of my own work (i.e. I don’t use my Instagram as the ruler for my Medium and so on)

These three tactics have been the most helpful when navigating the imposter syndrome that arises whenever I decided to define what I do, what I’m passionate about, or what I want to create next. People will oftentimes speak about putting blinders up so that you don’t lose yourself in how others may perceive you or how you may perceive your work when compared to others. I think, especially lately, we’re all at risk if we don’t put blinders up to protect our work from ourselves, our self-doubt, or our own discomfort with not being able to easily define ourselves.

I’m starting to remind myself often too that I’m not going to get called out as a liar or a fake if what I write here isn’t what I talk about on my podcast or vice versa. I’m trying to build the habit of celebrating that I have embraced the flexibility of being creative in different ways.

I write about creativity, mental health, grief, and how to cope with life’s everyday challenges on VivNunez.com. Listen to my weekly podcast, Happy To Be Here.

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