Communal Abundance at Year’s End
The calendar is marching on, and the whispering voice of that “4” at the end of the year is getting louder and louder. As I find myself in the reflective end-of-year mode that comes to me annually from about mid-November through mid-February, I’ve been thinking about how my Cornucopia Year has played out.
This isn’t truly a full-year reflection post. I’ve got some more structured ways to process through my year and really focus on all that’s happened, and I’ll be sharing those in the coming weeks into next year. But I have been feeling the abundance spirit of the cornucopia of late, and so perhaps this is an end-of-year reflection on that.
My Cornucopia Year has wrapped up with a whirlwind of community that I’ve pursued and welcomed. Even as it meant some pretty irrational choices about traveling at the expense of rest. Even as it led to some bouts of (non-COVID) illness and fatigue. Still, welcomed and cherished.
In early November (just after returning home from two months in the PNW, which was immediately followed by a weekend seeing U2 at The Sphere in Las Vegas and then leading some onsite trainings for the Art Institute of Chicago), I decided I needed to be at two conferences that were happening in two places at the same time.
NEMA (the New England Museums Association) and MCN (the Museum Computer Network) are both communities I’m glad to be a part of. Though I wasn’t presenting at the NEMA conference this year, I did work on what is one of my favorite things to do: interstitial interventions to make the conference feel a little more warm and friendly and personable. Here’s the Rest Corner I set up with minimal materials and creative constraints.
NEMA is still a relatively new community for me (this is only the second year I’ve been a member and attended the conference), but I’m deeply appreciative of a regional size organization that’s friendly and welcoming and keeps New England folks in connection with each other.
MCN, on the other hand, is a dear old friend of an org, and since this was the first year they were conferencing in-person since pre-pandemic times, there was no way I was gonna miss out. Of course, I decided that before I saw the conference program and registration fees, which were respectively not focused on topics relevant to me and way too high for me to afford on my own self-employed budget.
The MCN conference is always one I’ve valued for including sessions that are experimental, heart-led, and get right to the emotional heart of what people in this field are wrestling with. This year, the program was full of the more technical sessions and museum project show-and-tell opportunities that are almost always the things I skip at conferences. It made very little intellectual or business sense for me to go.
But while NEMA made that intellectual sense (and feels real nice, besides), MCN made all the emotional sense in the world. That’s the community I’ve relied on to keep me inspired that good work is being done in my field. It’s where I’ve truly found my people. And I haven’t gotten to see those people all gathered in one place in nearly four years now. I miss hugging them. I miss gathering with them in random combinations of whoever happens to be walking down a given hallway at a particular moment. I miss dancing with them and singing with them and seeing art with them in whatever city is hosting us. I miss that gathering full of emotions that led to a whole series of annual blog posts.
So, how did I resolve this emotional/intellectual dilemma?
As I am trying to do more of these days, I let my emotional side weigh heavier in my decision making, even at the (literal) expense of my rational thoughts.
I booked myself a 6:00am flight from Portland, Maine (where NEMA was) to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (where MCN was) and a last-minute hotel room when the friend I was planning to crash with ended up with some COVID-ridden family members.
I dropped my bag at the hotel at 8:00am and immediately headed into Philadelphia, where I spent a glorious day seeing and hugging and eating with and soaking in the company of my MCN fam. Yes, I was exhausted, and yes, I had to take a time out and sit quietly for a while in the middle of the day by myself. But I got to meet a friend in physical space who I’d only ever met online. And I got to laugh and talk and check in with many old friends. And I got to remember how good it feels to find communities where you’re accepted for who you truly are and met with who other people truly are in return.
Also I’d bought myself a non-refundable concert ticket to see The 1975 in Philly that night (months ago, when I was sure I’d be going to MCN), so I gussied myself up and got out to stay up for the final three of my 21 consecutive hours of being awake that day. And I danced and sang along with it all and didn’t regret a thing, even when I took the train home the next day and proceeded to be exhaustedly ill for a few days after that.
Speaking of the emotionally beneficial (if physically detrimental) value of the collective effervescence that is a good live concert, at the start of December I took myself back to Las Vegas to see U2 again. Like October’s version of this adventure, it was still for a quick weekend, still with my brother/partner in U2 fan journeys, but this time it was with General Admission floor tickets instead of seats.
If you don’t have that one band you got into as a teenager and then continued to love with obssesive adolescent fervor into your adulthood, then you may not quite understand how readily I have and will drop just about everything to make a U2 experience happen.
I’ve lost count of how many shows of theirs I’ve been to since my first in 2001. It’s around the 30 mark (which, by U2 stan levels, is actually fairly low). It’s been four countries across three continents, and I’m not even going to start totalling up the dollar figures. Once again, this is a place where, for me, the emotional benefits FAR outweigh the rational drawbacks.
I will avoid waxing overly rhapsodic for several thousand more words, but this time around was no different. GA is where it’s at for me with this band. I always want to be down on the floor with the most excited people. With people who have prioritized the emotional experience right there with me and are willing to sacrifice some physical comfort (and regular bathroom) access to do it.
Not everyone does this as fanatically as my brother and I do, but when we’ve got one show of GA tickets (as opposed to previous tours, where I’ve been to a whole bunch of shows), we are very much maximizers instead of satisficers. We stopped by the venue the day before our show where the unofficial-but-highly-respected, fan-run line numbers were being distributed.
Since this is a bunch of U2 fans—a multigenerational crew which includes a hefty dose of folks in their 40s and up—this fan line business no longer involves camping on the sidewalk for days (not to mention The Sphere won’t let you), so instead we got a decent night’s sleep and came back at 6am for the line check in. Sphere staff are by far the best I’ve ever experienced at respecting the fan line order, and at 8am they checked us all in one by one, gave us our official venue wristbands, and we were free until 5pm.
Here’s where the U2 fan family joy comes into play. Because of course, by this point we’d run into fans we knew from previous rounds of this same game. It’s the same feeling I mentioned above about MCN: these are people who have something deep and meaningful in common, and we love to see each other and share these high points of fan love together.
A group of us trekked out for breakfast together, and then we all turned in for a few hours of sleeping in our assorted hotel rooms before gathering back at the venue to line up and be let in… to wait some more once we’d all found our chosen spots on the floor. The reason for all the waiting and line check ins is that coveted thing: a spot on the barricade. And that’s where Matt and I ended up, next to yet another well-known fellow fan, immediately surrounded by a few great mother-daughter duos and a woman who was there for her 50th U2 show.
If you want a prime example of collective effervescence, the show was certainly it. Lots of back and forth eye contact and nods and smiles with the band, a whole section of one song (can’t remember which one… I was too swoonily in the moment) where Bono and I kept mimicing gestures back and forth to each other. The absolute chest-thumping, eardrum-ruining, raw-throated joy of singing and dancing and jumping and grinning in a mob of everyone else doing the same thing right beside me. Looking around and across the floor at other fans—mostly not holding up their phones—with whom I’ve spent some of the most emotionally charged hours of my life and knowing we were all there feeling the same mindful joy.
At the heart of this spectacle of a show in this technical wonder of a venue, was a band (well, three-quarters of them, since Our Beloved Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is recovering from neck surgery) who’ve been friends making music together for over 45 years now, since they were all teens. The Lads. The Boys. The Band. Still playing around on stage and having an obviously grand old time putting on a rock show with each other.
Like I said, I could wax on for much longer than you’d probably like to read.
The last thing I’ll say about the emotional value of this U2 show for me is—again—to do with the fan family. Time was I used to get my official fanclub magazine with a paper form to fill out for which tour dates you wanted what number of tickets for. Fill out the form, mail it with a check, receive your paper tickets in the mail. If you wanted to swap them, it was easily done, and being part of that community of fan exchange has always been a delight unto itself. No U2 fan worth their salt will EVER sell another fan a ticket for more than face value. And once you’re in that fan exchange world, you’re in, and it is frankly not much of a problem to find yourself a ticket if you show up to the venue on the day of the show.
Or, it has never been a problem, until the current Ticketmaster/LiveNation monopoly nightmare. There are no more paper tickets, and the floor tickets for this show weren’t electronically exchangeable, either. So given that my brother and I had both got ourselves a pair of GA tickets for the same date (long story, don’t worry about how), I’d been anxious about how to get the extra pair of tickets to other fans who’d appreciate them as much as Matt and me.
When a dear college friend of mine who I’ve stayed in touch with saw my October photos of the show on Instagram, she messaged me and said her husband was an especially big fan who’d been dying to go but had no luck getting tickets and—understandably—didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars for them.
What we ended up making happen was that I got my extra pair of tickets to him and a buddy of his (face value only, of course), and figured out a Ticketmaster work-around that let him put them on his phone. So all the tickets went to good homes, two more U2 fans got to see the show, and I got the fan fam karmic joy of continuing to facilitate the sort of ticket exchanges that I have myself benefited from over the years.
OK, U2 rhapsodizing officially over. But you’re hopefully pretty clear by now that my November and December have included some really lovely capstone experiences on my Cornucopia Year.
Yes, I’ve sacrificed some health and rest in order to have these moments (I got sick again when I came home from Vegas on a red eye and went right to work after a couple hours of car napping). Yes, my bank account is whimpering at me.
And yes, I made the kind of heart-forward decisions I’m trying to make more of in my life. As my Cornucopia Year comes to its close, I’ve been doing a good job keeping my guiding question in mind: How can I turn toward and foster abundance?
I did it by prioritizing moments of peak joy and collectivity in a season of dark and cold and a moment of socio-political doom and gloom.
I did it by starting a second cohort of CARE with a bunch of folks I’m getting to know for the first time and a few returners from the last cohort.
I did it by signing up for online workshops with inspiring folks (a mini version of Mapping Your Path, a tarot intro workshop with Jessica Dore).
I’m doing work that feels meaningful and, yes, here at the end of this year, I can say that work opportunities are also feeling abundant.
I have my end-of-year reflection tools lined up ahead of me, and I’ve got my 2024 Linnea Design calendar and Enlightenment Planner (use code RACHEL10 for 10% off) ready and waiting.
I’m ready to round out my 2023 with some quiet reflection time on how I embodied these evocative identifiers I set for myself this year:
Q1: COMMUNITY BUILDER (hearth/pace/communicate)
Q2: (RE)CONNECTER (adjust/share/welcome)
Q3: GENTLE CARER (appreciate/pause/treat)
Q4: CLEVER VISIONARY (hygge/reflect/dream)
So in the spirit of hygge, reflect, and dream, and in the spirit of fostering abundance, I’m inviting you to round out the year with me…
I’m hosting a Year End Reflection Session
Dec 27 12-2pm EST (what time is that where I am?)
This will be a drop-in/drop-out 2-hour window on Zoom where we can all prioritize ourselves and hold time to wrap up the year thoughtfully.
Come to write/draw/doodle/meditate/dance/whatever in quiet community.
Bring whatever end-of-year reflection methods you like.
If you don’t have any in mind, anyone who registers will get a PDF gift from me of some suggested prompts.
What has your 2023 taught you? What do you want from your 2024?
What words and identities do you want to guide you through this turning from year into the next?
I’m offering this as a pay-what-you-wish gathering, so contribute however much you can/want to via Ko-Fi (or see the button at the bottom of this page) or Venmo.
Creative Prompt Coda: Make time for yourself in a busy and/or emotional end-of-year season. Block off a chunk of your calendar to come reflect on the year individually, in the company of others. Join me for the Year End Reflection Session.
