A single fixed identity is a liability today. It only makes people more vulnerable to sudden changes in economic conditions. The most successful and healthy among us now develop multiple identities, managed simultaneously, to be called upon as conditions change. Recent research also suggests that developing multiple identities is one of the best buffers we can erect against mental and physical illness.
—Gail Sheehy, New Passages: Mapping Your Life Across Time
Angela Williams inspired me to write this book. In 2000, I met Angela at a conference for women lawyers in Washington, D.C. A prominent attorney who had worked for the Senate sub-committee that oversaw President Clinton’s impeachment trial, she arrived at the podium to give a talk about the state of women in the legal profession. When she introduced herself to the audience, she began with an apology: “Please disregard the material you have about me in the agenda.” The lawyers in the room rifled through the binders. The biography on Ms. Williams was all about her life as a Baptist minister. “My assistant inserted the bio for my other life,” she explained. “Today, I’m here as a lawyer.” I decided to track her down during the cocktail hour to learn more about what she meant. When I did, she intrigued me further with her comments. “I’m the one who puts them in jail in the morning and prays for them at night,” she began.
After meeting at that conference, Angela and I began a series of conversations about what it means for her to be a lawyer/minister and to lead a working life with a slash in the middle of it. She talked about why she decided to travel down two seemingly divergent paths, and how she handles everything from time management to adhering to two codes of professional ethics.
Though we often spoke about the ease with which she managed her dual roles, it wasn’t until I experienced the Clark Kent transformation firsthand that I understood how seamlessly she did it.
Over the years, Angela and I became friends, and it was in that capacity that I confided in her about a personal struggle— my husband and I had separated after a twelve-year marriage. Instantly, she assumed the role of spiritual advisor, lending me an ear and comforting me with her booming, melodious voice. She checked in on me each week to see how I was doing and to inspire me with stories of people who overcame periods of hardship.
Months later, when I told her that my husband and I had reached an impasse and would be divorcing, she immediately switched gears and began peppering me with questions about my legal and financial well-being. Though I knew Angela first as a lawyer, I was momentarily surprised to hear her focus on business and money when we had been talking only about emotions and feelings.
Angela is so adept at toggling between her different orientations that she doesn’t see it as unusual or disjointed. In fact, she considers her two vocations different ways of expressing the same core values that inform her life. She says she is merely being herself, in all the various things that she does and in all the various roles she plays.
In my first interview with Angela for a New York Times article, she put it this way: “The interaction between my two professions is so clear. In fact, if you look at the legal profession and the core of Christianity, the one common thread is justice. It dates back to Biblical times, when priests were the jurists who listened to disputes and rendered decisions.” Later she added: “The problem is that most people compartmentalize their lives. I have found a way to successfully integrate who I am as an authentic person in everything that I do.”
Before long, I started to notice slashes everywhere—from unexpected career couplers like Angela to celebrities like Sean Combs/P. Diddy (rapper/entrepreneur/actor/activist) to old-fashioned moonlighters who pick up another job to generate extra cash (like a cop/landscaper I know who calls his business Lawn Enforcement) and others starting full-fledged businesses while hanging on to their day jobs for the health insurance and camaraderie. I met übervolunteers who spend so much time in a do-gooder or philanthropic activity that they treat it as a second career, artists whose day jobs become dream jobs, and parents who are as likely these days to be mom/doctors as mom/PTA presidents.
My interest in slashes soon blossomed into a full-blown obsession. With each week’s reading of magazines and newspapers, I clipped articles that described people with slashes. Whenever I mentioned the concept to friends and colleagues, they offered me names of slashes in their circles, confirming my suspicion that I was onto something.
I found slashes all over the United States and beyond. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, I spent time with Robert Childs, a psychotherapist/violin maker. In Seattle, I encountered Karen Rispoli, a life coach/bus driver/private investigator. Back home in New York City, I met Ann Guttman, a top-tier real estate agent who is a professional French horn player; her husband, Steve, is in the band Blood, Sweat & Tears and is a practicing psychoanalyst. Dawn Davide, based in New Mexico, divides her time between her salon where she styles hair two days a week and her booming home construction business. I even noticed the slashes in my immediate circle, like my childhood best friend, Carrie Lane, who is a Pilates instructor/art consultant/author.
Against this backdrop, I developed my own slash identity. In late 1999 I gave up practicing law after nearly a decade in that field. Soon after, I sat down with career coach Belinda Plutz to help me figure out a life after the law. She asked me what I wanted to do and I listed about ten occupations. “You seem a little too restless to do just one thing. You’ll probably have a composite career,” she said confidently. I had never heard the term before, but I was immediately comforted by it. Settling back into a single-track career seemed stifling and uncreative.
In about four years, I put together the various elements that became my new working life. Having always wanted to write, I began taking classes to become a journalist. Before long, I started publishing articles, first for legal trade magazines and then for national publications like the New York Times. Writing articles led to the other slashes in my career—teaching, coaching other writers, and public speaking. The process seemed organic, yet it took me a while to figure out how to integrate the different parts of my working life into a coherent whole.
Pursuing multiple vocations is by no means new. From Leonardo da Vinci, artist/inventor, to Benjamin Franklin, whose work included publishing, politics, and the emerging technology of his day, slash careerists have always existed at the highest strata of achievement. Likewise, in nonprofessional sectors, people have commonly taken on numerous jobs. What’s new is that huge swaths of the population are being swept up in “The Slash Effect”—creating personalized careers that can only be described with the use of slashes. Why is that?
I had so many other questions. At what point does a hobby grow up and become a second career? Why does it have cachet to have a slash in your working life? Can you prepare for a career that allows for exploration of divergent interests, or does it just naturally occur when people follow their passions? Why is it that so many slashes manage to achieve great success within their multiple fields? Most of all, why do slashes seem more satisfied with their careers—and less oppressed by them—than those who hold just one job?
As I talked to more people, I began to get a few answers. The time we have to build a career is suddenly more expansive than it’s ever been; we’re simply living and working longer. And we all know that joining up with a large company where we will labor until retirement is no longer a viable plan. We’re delaying marriage and children, creating longer periods of laying down our career foundations before family obligations interfere. We’re collecting all kinds of educational training and life experience. We’re a nation of entrepreneurs. Then there’s the technology factor—so much of the work that’s done today can be done anywhere; when your job is portable, it’s that much easier to take on another one.
For as long as most people can remember, building a career has been equated with the notion of settling down, the way you’d think about marriage after playing the field. It’s been about answering the “What do you want to be when you grow up?” question adoringly asked when we are small, but dogging us for a committed answer as we become adults. What the question doesn’t allow for is that most of us cannot answer it with a singular response.
In formal interviews and informal discussions, at professional conferences and adult education classes, and at work/life balance meetings and at dinner parties, I’ve now tracked hundreds of people whose working lives fall somewhere along the slash spectrum. Listening to their stories, I realized that people who have figured out how to add slashes to their lives are an incredibly fulfilled bunch, both in what they think of as work and what they think of as “life.” What’s more, they seem to have found the answers to some of the most vexing issues in working life today, from job insecurity to career burnout to work/life balance.
With this book, I hope to send many others down the slash path.
Think of this book as both a guide and a collection of inspiring stories. Part I introduces the kinds of people who develop slash careers and the many ways those careers tend to unfold. It begins with a look at the common characteristics and patterns of slashes.
Part II focuses on the practical aspects of creating and thriving in a slash life: how to best present yourself to others; how to benefit from the synergies of slashing; and how to overcome the particular challenges facing those of us who refuse to respond to the “What do you do?” question with a singular answer.