The Multi-Hyphenate Malaise
Unfortunately, there's no cure for an online brand identity crisis.
My younger daughter turned five this weekend (what happened to my baby?!) and we celebrated in various ways: a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, where she played nonstop for two hours and became a competitive skee baller and manic trampoline jumper, and ice skating in New Jersey, where she was the sulky kid who preferred snacking on a bench to participating. She also received gifts of various sorts, which transformed my sweet but stubborn girl into a birthday bridezilla who is hoarding temporary tattoos and art supplies under her pillow, away from her big sister. Is she a selfish narcissist, or just a five year old?
She is active and mercurial and focused and scattered. She can be all these things but none of them because childhood is very fluid. There is no social edict that says you must define yourself by what you do or prefer on any given day. Despite some enduring traits in both my daughters, I hesitate to brand them with smart, funny, outgoing, shy, etc. Maybe I’m afraid of pigeonholing them because I, a serious older sister, don’t like many of the personality constraints placed on me. (I’m fun, really I am).
Yet for the past few weeks, I’ll I’ve done is try to contort myself into a box. I’m a rigorous editor, a seasoned content creator, or a cultural critic with a deft understanding of publishing—depending on which cover letter I’m writing (I’m back on the job marketing, yes indeed).
I am, first and foremost, a fraud. At least, I feel like one.
This is not a case of imposter syndrome, which, to be fair, I also suffer from. This is what I’ll call multi-hyphenate malaise in the era of online branding. It’s the angst and despair that comes after years of hustling, writing for exposure, pivoting, and taking jobs sometimes out of financial need rather than genuine interest. That makes it hard to come up with a cohesive brand, which is a suffocating, limiting necessity in 2024.
Okay, fine. I’m still putting one word after another. Still researching, interviewing, and finessing sentences. I should preface all this by saying I’m still a writer. But these days, that’s not enough—at least, not for the AI software that scours my resume for keywords to determine my hireability before a real person assess my humanity.
Still, I’ve been scouring my online history to see what it all amounts to. We tend to think of damaging online content as an offensive tweet that might get you canceled, or a compromising photo that hinders your job prospect. Those aren’t my concerns. What does worry me is an off-brand article (you’re applying to a progressive reproductive rights organization, and you wrote for a bank that epitomizes capitalize greed? Who are you?!) or simply something that doesn’t fit with my narrative (so, you covered personal finance, but you’re actually an essayist at heart? Make it make sense).
I’ve had Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide stuck in my head for the past few days, and the line—you know, the tearjerker—has got me thinking about my professional brand. Yes, it’s true. I’ve been afraid of changing cause I’ve built my life around you. I’m very much willing to let go of who I was, professionally, and yet the inner Xennial striver in me still craves an upward trajectory and a consistent narrative. I can’t help but consider my career the centerpiece of my world—the thing I build my life around.
I know I’m not alone. I’m thinking of all the people laid off at Sports Illustrated, Pitchfork, and The Messenger who most likely won’t find a job in the same beat. We’re all circling the same few chairs, and that means some of us will wind up pivoting or getting out of our professional comfort zone.
So we’ll add more marketable skills to our LinkedIn profile, tack another hyphen onto our titles, try to ride this next wave of media uncertainty while insisting that people will always crave information and stories, even if the news business model is broken. I’d like to tell you to touch grass more, live your life offline more, find a world where self-promotion doesn’t matter. But I know you—and I—are commodities in a capitalize system that trades on our “authenticity.”
The only thing I’ve found helpful is to try and be more…childlike. To work hard, and offer no explanation of my choices. To focus on my skills, and how they translate. My hope is that instead of feeling limited, as I do know, an entire world of possibilities will open up. For us all.