I Don’t Have Too Many Interests. I Just Have One Brain and Not Enough Hours

I don’t think having too many interests is actually my problem. I think I have one brain, a completely unreasonable number of ideas, and nowhere near enough hours to give all of them the attention they deserve. The issue is not that I care about too many things. It is that real life keeps insisting on a twenty-four-hour day.

That feels like an important distinction.

When people talk about having “too many interests,” it can sound like they mean someone is scattered or constantly jumping from one thing to another without ever caring deeply about any of it. That is not really how it feels for me. I usually know exactly what I want to do. The problem is that I want to do several things at once, and real life has never once responded by generously extending the day to thirty-six hours.

I want to write. I want to build things. I want to make content, design, game, learn, finish existing projects, and inevitably start something new because apparently completing one thing does not stop my brain from producing another idea five minutes later. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, there are also kids, online school, appointments, errands, housework, and the deeply inconvenient human requirement of sleep.

So no, I do not think I have too many interests. I think life is simply operating with an offensively limited amount of time.

I’ve Never Been a One-Lane Person

I have never fit neatly into one category.

I write fiction, and I have worked on more than one kind of it. I have developed fantasy stories with whole worlds and complicated character arcs, and I have worked on more grounded fiction too. I wrote and self-published a children’s book: Pippa and the Rainbow Herd (Available on Amazon. Yes, I am promoting it here). I have written songs, social media content, scripts, bios, website copy, and probably more recruitment messages for gaming alliances than any normal person should ever need to produce.

I also design. I have built websites, created graphics, worked on branding, developed social identities, and spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking about how something should look, feel, and communicate who or what it is before anyone reads a single word.

Then there is gaming. I have streamed, reworked Twitch brands, played everything from World of Warcraft and Heroes of the Storm to Stellaris and Dark War: Survival, and somehow even my hobbies end up growing little side projects of their own. I can log into a game intending to relax and somehow leave with a new alliance name, recruitment campaign, website idea, or character concept.

I have also spent time studying data analytics, learning spreadsheet skills, thinking through online course ideas, and trying to figure out how to build a work-from-home career that actually fits real life instead of asking real life to bend around it.

From the outside, all of that probably looks like a collection of unrelated things. To me, it does not feel unrelated at all.

Most of My Interests Come From the Same Place

The common thread is that I like creating things and figuring things out.

I like taking an idea that exists only in my head and making it real enough that someone else can see it too. Sometimes that means writing a chapter. Sometimes it means designing a website. Sometimes it means building an entire brand from scratch. Sometimes it means creating a game character and spending entirely too long deciding on a name because somehow the wrong name will ruin everything forever.

I like learning how things work. I like solving problems. I like seeing something become clearer, stronger, prettier, more useful, or more complete because I touched it.

That is why so many different interests make sense to me even when they look unrelated on paper. Writing, design, gaming, analytics, publishing, blogging, and content creation all give me some version of that same feeling. There is something satisfying about starting with confusion or possibility and ending with something that did not exist before.

The format changes. The part of my brain that lights up does not.

Writing Has Always Been One of the Big Ones

Writing is probably the clearest example of how wide my interests can get without actually feeling disconnected.

I have written fantasy, worked on YA and NA fiction, published a children’s book, written songs, drafted personal stories, and built scripts for social content. None of those things require exactly the same kind of writing, but they all involve trying to find the right words for something.

Sometimes I want to build an entire world. Sometimes I want to tell the truth about something difficult. Sometimes I want to make someone laugh. Sometimes I want to write something useful. Sometimes I just want to get a thought out of my head before it keeps circling for another three days.

I do not experience those as separate identities. I do not become “a fantasy writer” and then stop being that when I work on a children’s book or a blog post. They are all different versions of the same need to make sense of something through words.

That is also part of why this blog exists. Narratively Inconvenient gives me room to write about the parts of life that do not belong neatly inside a novel or a social media caption.

Gaming Is Different, but Not Completely

Gaming is one of the few things I do that can still be purely recreational, at least when I manage not to turn it into another project.

I love being able to step into something that has its own rules, problems, and objectives. After a day of real-life responsibilities, there is something refreshing about opening a game and knowing that the problem in front of me has a progress bar.

Real life could learn from this.

The frustrating part is that gaming requires uninterrupted time, and uninterrupted time has become something of a luxury. There are plenty of games I genuinely want to play, but wanting to play something and actually having a stretch of time where no one needs anything are two very different situations.

Still, gaming has stayed with me because it gives my brain somewhere else to go. It lets me solve a different kind of problem for a while, and sometimes that is exactly what I need.

Of course, even there I find ways to create. I have built alliance identities, written recruitment messages, designed avatars, worked on gamer rebrands, and spent more time than I care to admit thinking about names and visual concepts. Apparently my brain has trouble leaving anything alone.

Reinvention Has Become Part of the Pattern Too

A lot of my interests also come from necessity.

I have spent years trying to figure out what kind of work actually fits my life. That has meant researching work-from-home careers, learning new skills, looking at data analytics, thinking about self-employment, studying platforms, building content, and trying to understand which of my existing skills could become something sustainable.

That does not feel like randomly changing direction. It feels like adapting.

Life changes. Family needs change. Time changes. Energy changes. What is realistic in one season may stop being realistic in another. I do not think there is anything wrong with looking at the situation in front of you and deciding that the old plan no longer fits.

For a long time, I think I confused changing direction with failing to commit. They are not the same thing. Sometimes staying committed to the wrong plan is the less sensible choice.

Reinvention is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is just recognizing that the version of life you planned for is no longer the version you are living and deciding to build from there.

The Real Problem Is Time

This is where all of my interests actually collide.

I can care deeply about ten things and still only have enough usable time for two of them on a given day.

There are mornings where I want to write, but online school takes over. Then there is something around the house, a message that needs answered, an appointment, an errand, or one of those tasks that should take five minutes and somehow consumes an entire hour. By the time there is finally quiet, my brain may have spent most of its useful energy already.

That is the part I find frustrating about advice like “make time for what matters.” Sometimes everything on the list matters.

The kids matter. The work matters. The appointment matters. The book matters. The blog matters. The thing you do because it helps you still feel like yourself matters too. Rest matters. Sleep matters, whether I personally agree with that or not.

There is no productivity system capable of turning twenty-four hours into forty-eight.

Sometimes the limitation is not motivation. It is math.

I Am Very Good at Seeing What Something Could Become

I think one of my strengths is that I can see possibility early.

I can look at an idea and immediately start imagining what it could be, how it could work, what it might look like, what I would call it, and where it could eventually go. That is useful when you are creating something. It is less useful when your brain starts treating every possibility like a project already in progress.

That is how I can have a manuscript, a blog, a newsletter, a social media strategy, a webcomic concept, a learning plan, and a new idea all peacefully coexisting in my head while the calendar remains deeply unimpressed.

The enthusiasm is real. The time is not.

I have had to learn that seeing the potential in something does not mean I have to build it immediately. Some ideas can wait. Some can sit in a note until there is room for them. Some will still be interesting six months from now, and if they are not, that probably tells me something useful too.

My brain does not love this system, but we are working on it.

I Used to Think I Needed to Pick One Thing

There is a lot of advice built around choosing a lane.

Find your niche. Focus. Stop getting distracted. Commit to one thing. Build expertise. Become known for something.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that. Focus matters, and no meaningful project gets finished if you abandon it every time a new idea appears.

But I also think some people are naturally interested in more than one kind of thing, and forcing themselves into a single identity does not necessarily make them more productive. Sometimes it just makes them feel like half of who they are has to stay hidden.

I can be a writer and a gamer. I can care about motherhood and creative work. I can build a blog and still want to learn analytics. I can publish a children’s book and still want to write fiction for adults. I can take one project seriously without promising it will be the only project I ever care about again.

That feels much more realistic than pretending I am going to wake up one morning and suddenly become a person with exactly one passion.

Not Every Interest Has to Last Forever

This has probably been one of the more useful things I have learned.

Some interests stay with us for years. Some belong to a particular season. Some disappear for a while and come back later. Some teach us something and then quietly stop being relevant.

That does not make them wasted time.

I do not regret learning something just because I am not using it every day now. Skills have a way of showing up again in unexpected places. Things I learned through writing help with branding. Things I learned through design help with websites. Things I learned building websites help with blogging. Things I learned managing gaming communities show up in community building and communication in completely different settings.

Very little actually stays in one box.

Sometimes an interest does not need to become a lifelong commitment to have been useful.

Not Everything Needs to Become Work Either

This one matters to me because creative people are constantly being told to monetize whatever they enjoy.

If you write, publish it. If you draw, sell it. If you game, stream it. If you learn something, make a course. If you build something useful, turn it into a business.

Sometimes that makes sense. I have absolutely looked at things I know how to do and wondered whether they could become income, especially when I am trying to build work that fits my life.

But I do not want every single interest to become another obligation.

Sometimes I want to play a game without thinking about whether it should become content. Sometimes I want to write something because I want to write it, not because it needs a marketing plan. Sometimes I want to learn something simply because I am curious.

If everything becomes work, eventually there is nowhere left to go when you are tired of working.

That seems like a terrible deal.

Narratively Inconvenient Is Probably the Best Example

This site is the first project that really lets all of these parts of me sit in the same place.

Motherhood belongs here. Medical stories belong here. Writing belongs here. Gaming belongs here. Starting over belongs here. Learning new things belongs here. Creative projects belong here. So do the days when none of those things go according to plan.

For a long time, I kept treating different parts of my life like they needed separate identities. Writer over here. Gamer over there. Mom somewhere else. Medical stories in another space. Career reinvention in a completely different category.

Real life does not work that way.

Everything overlaps.

The person trying to write the book is also the person helping with online school. The person playing the game is also the person thinking about bills, appointments, and tomorrow’s schedule. The person building the blog is also the person dealing with whatever unexpected problem appeared that week.

Narratively Inconvenient makes more sense to me because it does not ask those parts to pretend they are separate.

Maybe I Don’t Need Fewer Interests

Maybe I just need to stop expecting myself to actively pursue all of them at the same time.

Some things can be in the foreground. Some can wait. Some can move slowly. Some can disappear for a while without being abandoned.

I can work on one thing today and still care about another thing I will not touch for three weeks. I can change priorities without declaring everything that came before a failure. I can finish something before I start pushing the next idea forward, at least occasionally.

There is something freeing about treating interests like seasons instead of obligations.

The goal does not have to be doing everything.

The goal can simply be making room for the things that matter when there is room for them.

So No, I Don’t Think I Have Too Many Interests

I think I am interested in a lot of things because I like creating, learning, solving problems, and seeing what something can become.

That part of me is probably not going anywhere.

The challenge is learning how to live with it without constantly feeling like I am behind on a list no one else can even see.

Some projects will move quickly. Some will take years. Some will get paused. Some will come back. A few may never become more than an idea I enjoyed thinking about for a while.

That is okay.

I do not need one lane.

I just need to remember that I cannot drive in all of them at once.