“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dabblers are not much in vogue these days. It is much more popular to be hyper-focused. Passionate. Dedicated to one thing to the exclusion of all else. If you haven’t been earnestly pursuing your passion from the age of seven, how can you possibly succeed?

Then again, Andre Agassi is only the latest in a stream of sports stars and celebrities who spent their lives pursuing one thing, then woke up one day to realize that he or she hated that thing and didn’t want it anymore.

Still, we persist in this belief that everyone has to find there “one thing”. This can put a lot of pressure on serial reinventors, who like to stay open to possibilities and consider new opportunities as they come.

Being a serial reinventor has led me in many directions, some fascinating, others not so much. In addition to being a marketing communications consultant, I have been a golf magazine publisher and a dog day care play group leader. (That one only lasted a couple of weeks, it turned out the job consisted mostly of cleaning up dog poop). Early in my career, I even had a brief and unfortunate stint in investment sales.

Some of these opportunities were financially rewarding but unfulfilling. Others were wonderfully fun but financially difficult. With each new experience, I learned something about a field I formerly knew nothing about. And each time, I discovered a little more about what I do and don’t want in a job (more authenticity, less poop).

This is not the conventional advice people give when it comes to building a career. I know many people who nurture their professional reputations by plotting each move oh-so-carefully, only taking on new jobs, opportunities and even projects that help them build out a carefully constructed “personal brand”. And if you want to be recognized as an expert in a field you already know you love, that’s a good and natural strategy. I’m not knocking it.

But not everyone has to narrow their focus in order to be successful. Or even happy. Some people are, by nature, serial reinventors. Opportunists. Dare I even say, “dabblers”. (My favorite definition of a dabbler is “to play and splash in or as if in water.” It’s also another name for a duck.) We’re interested in many things, and our curiosity can take us in many directions. This is mostly frowned on by the “pick your passion” crowd, not to mention prospective employers who value long-term loyalty over the more difficult job of keeping their employees engaged and challenged.

For dabblers, the question of which path to choose can be overwhelming when so many inviting ones beckon. So we may spend a few years or more trying out different jobs or fields, or going back to school to put the decision off for a while longer, while friends and family wonder when we are finally going to find ourselves.

My question is, were we ever really lost in the first place?

After all, there are some pretty famous dabblers. Thomas Edison was a dabbler. Without him, we wouldn’t have the light bulb. Benjamin Franklin was a writer and a newspaper publisher, a scientist and a politician. Leonardo da Vinci is considered to be perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived, even before he went and got himself famous in Dan Brown’s book. One of my favorite dabblers, “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias, was once named by the Guinness Book of Records as the most versatile female athlete, excelling in golf, basketball, and track and field, among other things.

I think it’s time we started debunking this notion that you have to “pick a passion” to the exclusion of all else, and begin encouraging dabblers. I think maybe we should envision our careers not as ladders, but more like those rock walls you see in climbing gyms. There are many paths you can take up the wall, with numerous footholds and toeholds along the way. Sometimes you even have to back up a bit, or go sideways, to find the path.

Okay, so I’ve never climbed a rock wall in my life, fake or otherwise. But I have always wanted to try it.