Embracing the Slash

I woke this morning to the radio’s discussion by a chipper 20-something about her “slashes”. It took a few moments to figure out what she was saying, which was shorthand for freelance projects. She began each with her profession, followed by a “slash”, and then a description of a task. She’d just been fired from her job as a journalist-slash-blogger, and was talking about how unwise she’d been in dedicating 60% of her time to her last client. She wouldn’t make that mistake again—too many eggs in a single basket! Briefly, I wondered about the time percentages necessary for a personal sense of cohesion. And then, I realized: her cohesion was “up-front”, separated from the work she was doing by a graphic boundary: the slash.

As psychologist-slash- blogger, I recognized that the slash was protective: it insured coherence, as if to declare, in my case, I am a psychologist. I am currently operating in the capacity of blogger. But then, I became concerned by the word “slash” itself. Its definition has something to do with a sharp instrument’s sweeping cut. Yes, I’m aware that it is also a diacritical mark, a “stroke”. But what is its effect as a gash, or cut? The form of the construction seems both to preserve identity and radically sever the person from the thing he does. The journalist’s example was autoworker-slash-dogwalker. That is, an autoworker, currently in the business of walking dogs.

Useful: But when does the autoworker-slash-dogwalker morph into dogwalker?

I realized that the “slash” construction preserves a transitional state. In the journalist’s case, it was a semi-permanent transition: her profession always remains segregated from what followed. She was a journalist but could "do" all these other, useful things: she had capacities to build on. However, in the autoworker’s case, the slash construction would allow the person to “try on” something new. The choice to “become” a dogwalker or to remain an autoworker-slash-dogwalker would remain his.

Matthew Bud, who is the Chair of The Financial Executives’ Networking Group has clearly staked out the professional’s midlife landscape this way: “Job search for those of us over the age of 40 is a PERMANENT activity in your life….. All jobs are temporary. Even when you are working, you are only between searches.” This is a game plan.

And the slash construction, in this regard, is an enormously useful tool: I am a professional-slash-job seeker. It preserves the “who” of identity, while softening the work of transition. It allows the individual to maintain the essential anchor point of one’s
professional value, while allowing for new set-points of possibility and opportunity.

The radical slash separating professional training from current task has a double function. It is both protective of self-interest and personal coherence while at the same time opening up possibility for the creative use of one’s talents. It may, however, take a bit of getting used to.