5 Reasons Why I Am Grateful to Live a 'Slashie' Life & Why You'll Love It Too

Hello, nice to meet you. I am a Berlin-based photographer/photography teacher/customer service agent. I'm proud, and I'm thankful! Yes, even of that last role: customer service agent.

How does one get a jam-packed job title like that? How can I be both a photographer and a customer service agent at the same time? Well, by embracing the slashie lifestyle.

What is the slashie lifestyle?

A slashie is a person who works multiple jobs or has a side-hustle. They are called slashies because of the slashes you'll see in their job title. Think: model/multi-disciplinary artist or YouTuber/author. Another name for this type of person is a multi-hyphenate.

The slashie lifestyle is not only reserved for celebrities and artists. Anyone can be a slashie. Heck, you might already be a multi-hyphenate in hiding!

Perhaps you work as an engineer at a tech startup, and moonlight as a DJ.

Maybe you're a filmmaker and actor, but earn some extra dough as a writer (looking at you, Vocal Creator Kathryn Milewski)!

Maybe you are a nurse, but you spend your evenings taking commissions and illustrating.

Or you could be a part-time store manager, part-time tarot card reader.

Your jobs could even be a mundane (to some!) combination like accountant/university professor.

It doesn't matter what the jobs or side-hustles are. If you have more than one income stream, you are a slashie!

Welcome to the club.

So what do you actually do?

Now that we've met, the go-to next question is probably... "so, what do you do?"

I won't lie to you. When someone asks that dreaded question, I'll usually just say, "I'm a photographer". It's a lot simpler than saying, "well, actually, I'm a slashie," and list each job title.

It's not that I'm ashamed of 'still' having a 'regular' job to keep me afloat. In fact, if the conversation continues, I'll likely mention that I also work as a customer service rep. I'm happy to share that it provides me with health insurance, helps me pay the bills, and funds my personal photography projects!

The reason I start off by just stating that I'm a photographer, is because we often define ourselves by our occupations. I'd rather brand myself as a photographer, than a customer service rep.

It's a personal preference. Some multi-hyphenates might love talking about all their pursuits. Others might only ever mention their 'main' job and keep their side-hustles a secret.

You are slashie for yourself, not for anyone else. It's up to you how if you tell the world.

5 reasons why you'll love being a slashie

With an understanding of what a slashie is, are you tempted to embrace the multi-hyphenate life? Not yet? Then let me share with you why I am so grateful for this lifestyle, and why you might love it too.

1. Being a slashie takes the pressure off your passion

You might have heard that if you make your passion your income, you will lose your love for it. That might not always be true, but from personal experience, it is a huge relief that I don't have to rely on my creative pursuits to pay the bills. I am still madly in love with photography, which might not be the case if I was solely focused on it.

With my day job, I am safe in the knowledge that I'll be able to pay my rent and bills, even if I don't get booked for a single photoshoot in a full month.

If I was a full-time photographer, I'd have to hit a certain number of bookings every month. A slow couple of weeks could mean dipping into savings or cutting back on expenses. It's hard to feel passionate about something when it's the difference between food on the table and going hungry. The passion will fade when your job becomes a chore.

For this reason, I'm truly grateful for my day job as a customer service rep. Or perhaps, more specifically, I'm grateful for the sweet, steady paycheque I receive, that takes the pressure off my photography career.

2. Being a slashie allows for serendipitous moments

When you work full-time in one industry, you end up getting to know the people in your circle really well. You'll attend conferences, and see the same faces. You might work in the same office, or you'll be in the same Facebook groups, Slack channels, or virtual meetings.

Networking is great, don't get me wrong. But when your network only consists of people who think like you, and who work in the same industry, you might be missing out. Missing out on challenging your ways of thinking or doing things.

You might even be missing out on new clients or business opportunities. Think about it. If you're a graphic designer and you spend most of your time in a co-working office with other designers, you're unlikely to randomly meet someone who'd like to commission you. If your network is only made up of designers, you're never going to get hired, your circle is too homogeneous.

Now, what if you're a graphic designer, but you're also a bartender. In this case, some serendipitous connections could occur. Perhaps the manager at the cocktail bar you're working at wants to redesign the drinks menu. Or a customer you get talking to needs new business cards. And what about the other slashies you work with? The waitress/actor needs posters for her new one-woman play. "Hey," she might say, "you're a designer, right?"

Out-of-the-blue opportunities like this, can make the slashie lifestyle both lucrative and exciting.

3. Slashies have their own unique combination of skills

It should come as no surprise that if you work multiple jobs, you'll build up a large selection of skills. This is true for all jobs. After going down a certain career path for a number of years, you're going to learn a lot and have a lot of abilities.

What is interesting about a slashie's skill toolkit, though, is the wide variation of skills.

By definition, as a multi-hyphenate you're working in multiple industries or, at the least, at multiple jobs. So, instead of just getting super skilled in one narrow career path, you're learning skills from a whole host of different jobs.

For me, a photographer/photography teacher/customer service agent, this means that I am not only adept at the obvious photography skills like directing models, taking photos, and editing; I'm also skilled at making videos (since I teach photography online) and have a lot of soft skills too (like communication skills and problem solving, which I am constantly improving in my role as a customer service representative).

Since your own combination of job titles is probably very different to mine, and most other people's, you can be sure that your range of skills will also be pretty unique. And I just think that's neat.

4. Slashies can follow their dreams, new and old

When people say that they gave up on their dreams when they got older, it breaks my heart a little.

I understand that to put food on the table, you might have to cast aside your childhood goal to one day take to the stage on Broadway. But do you really have to slog away at a soul destroying job to get by? And, if you do, could you spare some time on the side to follow your passion?

Perhaps you'll never belt out a solo at a sell-out show, but you might still get an opportunity to perform at your local theatre. Or maybe you're talented and experienced enough to teach an after-school drama class? The great thing about being a slashie is that you can follow your lifelong dreams. Though you might need to tweak them and update them so that they fit in with your life today!

Personally, I am thrilled that I can spend 50% of my time creating beauty in the form of photography. And hey, if you didn't realise, 50% is more than the big fat 0 hours I would be spending on my passion if I wasn't embracing this lifestyle.

5. Being a slashie makes life interesting!

Finally, I'm grateful that I'm a slashie because it simply spices up my life!

Don't get me wrong, having lots of different projects and responsibilities across different industries can be stressful at times. But it's also fun! Every day is a slightly different as I juggle my day job with my side-hustle.

If I'm bored taking calls at my customer service job, I know in just a few hours I'll be free to dive into photography. And if I have a particularly bad case of writer's block when drafting up a script for my next video lesson, I can pick up my camera and take some self portraits instead.

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There you go, five reasons why I'm grateful to be a slashie/multi-hyphenate/whatever you want to call it! I hope you can see the benefits too, and hey, maybe you'll even embrace the slashie lifestyle too!

If you enjoyed this article, here's more from me.

To follow along with my multi-hyphenate life, find me on Instagram @byclairep and @shotbyclairep.