‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’. This is a question we all got asked undoubtedly at some point in our childhood. Part of the framework of our wonder years involved make-believe fancy dress in honourable roles such as doctors, nurses, shopkeepers, and the occasional super hero of course. It’s a nice question to ask a child, as it allows them to dream, to create, to let their beautiful imaginations run free. The sky is really the limit when you are a child. The world is full of magic, of laughter, and the possibilities are endless. Some people have such certainty in their career choice from a very young age. My mother, a retired nurse, being one of them. She often recalls fond memories of checking her teddy’s pulse as a little girl, and bandaging her dolly’s arm. She was always the caring sort and had a beautifully strong sense of conviction that this was the career that she was to wholeheartedly pursue. Once she chose to be a nurse, she honestly loved it with all her being and never looked back.
Then there are other people, such as myself, that meander and flow like a river around career choice. The truth is, I wanted to be everything and anything, and couldn’t identify with any one profession with the same heartfelt calling as my mother. My vocational visions ranged from everything and anything, from interior designer, to a writer, a therapist, and a doctor. As a millennial progeny, I had the privilege of being presented with more opportunities than my mother’s baby boomer generation. Although this was a blessing, it also was a curse in its own right as with so much choice as a teenager comes a pressing sense of decision fatigue. Our teenage years are already primed with emotional highs, lows, angst, and drama. Injecting a large dose of choice to the ‘teenage kicks’ infusion, can often result in an extra layer of unwanted tension.
I’m sure those of you reading this right now can relate to a similar feeling of career confusion in senior school years. In hindsight, there’s so much weight attached to the leaving certificate and CAO choices in Ireland. If I could step into a time travelling machine in the morning, I would revisit my younger self and tell her two things:
- Your leaving cert results don’t define your self-worth
- This doesn’t have to be your job for life. Have fun and try not to worry so much.
As a high achieving student with anxiety and low self-esteem, I very much had an unhealthy attachment to getting good results. Not getting anything less than an ‘A’ in any of my exams, honestly made me deeply question my self-worth and capabilities. Upon reflection, one of the greatest lessons I have ever learned was not getting the results the imposter syndrome within had expected. As a result, I ended up initially dropping out of college course, and taking time out to figure out what I really wanted. I quickly discovered it’s ok to be undecided, to make big changes in life. Career choice is not really a straight forward thing for so many, and you don’t always need to know what you are at all the time. As the Baz Luhrmann song ‘Sunscreen’ goes “the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know, still don’t”. In short, your career does not define your identity. The squiggly career path can often times bring such amazing insight, experiences, and adventure. I like to think of it as the scenic route.
I’d like to introduce you to a concept I’ve been discovering, of late. It’s the idea of the ‘multi-hyphen life’, adapted from a book by a lady called Emma Gannon. In reading this book, insights were going off like fireworks in my mind. The child within, that never could identify with just one career choice, finally felt understood, and I got a glimpse of another career option: embrace being a multi-hyphenate.
The idea of a multi-hyphenate is someone who has various different streams of incomes and not necessarily just one professional career. It’s the idea of working around your lifestyle and catering a life to suit your needs. Essentially, it’s about creating a life by design, not by default, and taking power into your own hands. Being a multi-hyphenate isn’t a hustle-until-you-drop approach, but about fashioning a life that embraces your interests and allows you more flexibility to tap into various things you enjoy. This might look like working part-time in one career, and part-time in a completely different area. It unchains people from being boxed into one career, or one identity and allows them to tap into aspects of their personality they might otherwise have ignored.
“You’re not one person but dozens and hundreds of personalities! But boy you might never be all of them! We try so hard to fit into boxes, that we might end up suppressing some of what we are and end up living the wrong lives”
-Freddie Harrel, fashion entrepreneur
The truth is, most of us are already multi-hyphenates whether we realise it or not. For example, if you work in an office, but have a passion for painting in your spare time, you are a multi-hyphenate. A multi-hyphen does not necessarily have to be a career choice, but it can be a hobby that helps you feel more fulfilled.
With the rise of the ‘gig’ economy, freelancing and digitalisation of the world, Gannon argues that we all in our own right have the opportunity to become multi-hyphenates in our careers. People often have an image in their heads of entrepreneurs wearing suits and taking big risks. However, nowadays an entrepreneur could look like a stay-at-home Mother setting up a side hustle using just her phone in the comfort of her sitting room. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be risky. It’s about tapping into something that makes your heart sing and just going from there. You don’t have to quit your day job, in order to explore other options.
Think about it this way; from the beginning of time, humans were all entrepreneurs; taking risks, hunting, and exploring for their food. Somewhere down along the lines of civilisation ‘labour’ was stamped on our foreheads and with that our ability to dream, to create was diluted. ‘What do you do?’ became synonymous with who we were. As I said before, our jobs don’t need to be our entire identity, and we all have various aspects to who we are. Sure, being a multi-hyphenate is more difficult to describe to people at a dinner party, and may get some funny looks. However, it’s a small price to pay for living a life that is more exciting, and fulfilling to our very being.
My invitation to you is to tap back into that creativity; the child within. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? Perhaps you already love your day job, and in that case that is fantastic. However, if there is an itch inside you to explore other areas, know that this is possible. You don’t have to box yourself into one area, or one identity. We live in a world these days with endless opportunities, waiting to be unveiled. The world is but a canvas to the imagination.
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