Open Thread | How Many Careers Do You Have?

Welcome to our fourth open thread, where we turn the conversation over to our community.

For a variety of reasons—a challenging economy that makes it hard to find full-time work; a need for more flexibility in one’s career; a desire to explore all of one’s passions instead of just focusing on one—more people have multiple careers. A good friend of mine, for example, isn’t just a program manager; she’s a freelance writer and coach.

Marci Alboher, Vice President of Encore.org, explored this in her book One person/multiple careers : a new model for work/life success. In the book, she interviews people who have turned their multiple interests into multiple careers or slash careers: “pilates instructor and an art dealer; an attorney and a minister; a psychotherapist and a violin maker; and a teacher, dancer and puppeteer.”

We’ve talked about this a bit before in our piece about cultivating side hustles (money earned from jobs outside of your full-time work), but it’d be great to continue the conversation.

What do you think of this concept? Do you have a slash career? Share your insights and experiences below.

by Allison Jones