The ADHD Multi‑Passionate Quandary: Where the Fuck Am I Going?

Some people are born with one clear passion. They know from childhood that they’re meant to be a doctor, a dancer, a marine biologist, a novelist. They follow the line from A to B with admirable focus.

And then there are the rest of us — the multi‑passionate, the wildly curious, the ADHD‑gifted, the ones who fall in love with ten things before breakfast and want to master them all. A lot of creative people are like that.

We’re the ones asking, Where the fuck am I going?
And more importantly: How do I choose when everything lights me up?

What “Multi‑Passionate” Really Means

There are many words for people like us:
polymath, scanner, multipotentialite, Renaissance soul.

I use multi‑passionate because it’s simple and honest. It means:

intense curiosity
rapid learning
a hunger to explore multiple interests at once
the inability — or refusal — to be boxed into one identity

It’s not a flaw. It’s a temperament. A wiring. A way of being.

And for many of us, it’s deeply tied to ADHD giftedness — the combination of divergent thinking, hyperfocus, sensitivity, and the need for meaningful engagement.

The ADHD Link: Why Meaning Matters So Much

Neurodivergent people don’t do well with meaningless tasks.
We need purpose like plants need sunlight.

When something matters, we can hyperfocus for hours.
When it doesn’t, our brains simply refuse to engage.

So we chase meaning across multiple domains — art, psychology, spirituality, writing, teaching, healing, creativity — because each one feeds a different part of us.

It’s exhilarating.
It’s overwhelming.
And it can feel like we’re going nowhere, fast.

The Scattered Feeling: Everything and Nothing at Once

Being multi‑passionate often means:

loving everything
doing everything
starting everything
finishing… some things
and feeling like you’re failing at all of it

You want a life that feels authentically you, but you can’t label yourself with one neat title. You’re not just a writer, or a teacher, or an artist, or a meditator. You’re all of them — and more.

And that leads to the first quandary:

What the hell do I focus on?

Where am I going with my life?

Working It Out: Two Approaches That Help

A step towards both the following approaches is filling in a Venn diagram of 3 or 4 circles with the things you’re passionate about to help you see where those interests intersect.

This is mine.

1. The Three Pillars Method

Choose three things you want to gain expertise in — three things, at least two of which you could do for a living.

Mine are:

teaching
writing & editing
meditation (not a living)

Once you’ve trained in them, you can weave them into your life in different ways:

I teach on the Alkira Publishing YouTube channel
I edit and publish as my job
I write as my creative practice
I meditate daily

Everything has a place.
Nothing is wasted.

2. The Ikigai Overlap

Ikigai (生き甲斐, lit. ’a reason for being’) is a Japanese concept of an individual’s definition of the meaning of their life.

Ikigai asks:
What do you love? What are you good at? What does the world need? What can you be paid for?

And where these questions intersect is your answer. A venn diagram is a simple and effective way of looking at this.

When I mapped mine, everything converged on books — especially books that teach or inspire developing awareness through creativity with words and symbols.

That’s my centre of gravity.
My creative north star.

But that’s a bit of mouthful, right?

The Second Quandary: How Do I Explain What I Do?

Even when you know where your interests converge, describing it to the world is another challenge entirely.

Multi‑passionate work is often:

hard to label
hard to market
hard to fit into existing categories
too “out of the box” for algorithms

People follow you for one thing — writing, meditation, editing, Psychemagination — and then ignore the rest. Algorithms punish that. Platforms get confused. Your reach drops.

So how do you present a life that refuses to be one thing?

A method that helps: Name the unifying thread

At 3am — the sacred creative hour — I asked myself:

What do I actually write about?

The answer came:

“I write about the inner journey and its creative expression.”

That’s it.
That’s the thread that ties everything together:

my metaphysical and visionary fiction
my books on meditation
my Psychemagination series
my blog posts
my Substack
my YouTube channels

Everything I’ve ever created lives inside that sentence.

I even renamed my Substack from Psychemagination — I’m leaving that for the YouTube Channel — to Tahlia Newland: The Inner Journey & its Creative Expression

So if you’re an author, ask yourself the same question, because you need to know what you do before you can work out who will like what you do.

Finding the Readers Who Need You

All authors face the question Who are my readers?

But for multi‑passionate authors, the question is harder.

My writing has shifted from magical‑realism metaphysical fiction to non‑fiction on imagination, meditation, and inner‑child work. My audience has shifted with it.

So I’ve reorganised:

My Substack now has three sections:
Writing Craft and The Inner Journey (people can follow one or both), and Neurodivergent Life for the articles with that are particularly helpful or of interest to the neurodivergent. If you subscribe to my Substack you automatically are also subscribed to The Inner Journey the Neurodivergent Life sections, but you can unsubscribe from one of those sections if you’re only interested in one of them.
My author website blog includes everything, because the inner journey is the heart of my work and the foundation of my books. Even my books on writing craft include the psychological aspects of being an author.

This is how I’m navigating the multi‑passionate landscape — not by narrowing myself, but by clarifying the thread that runs through it all.

Are You My People?

If you’re drawn to:

the inner journey
imagination
symbolism
meditation
creativity – particularly writing, art and song
psychological depth
nature
and the places where all of these meet

…then yes.
You’re my people.

And I’m yours.

Resources for the Inner Journey

If you want to explore the worlds I create — fictional, symbolic, meditative, or psychological — you’ll find them here:

Metaphysical & visionary fiction:
Diamond Peak series, Worlds Within Worlds
Meditation & awareness:
How to Meditate Easily, Effectively & Deeply
Imaginative inner‑journeying:
Psychemagination series — Into the Underworld, Healing the Inner Child, Unmasking the Essential Self