An Obituary for My Rippling Year: Farewell 2024
This last post of the year isn’t about all the lessons I've learned from 2024. I'm not here to turn a complicated, messy reality into neatly packaged soundbites about how great things were. Or how awful things were. Or how I have clear takeaways for the year ahead.
I usually find the end of the year a prime reflective period for myself, and I've shared plenty of those reflection methods and tools in the past.
2024, though… 2024 doesn't seem to be bringing about my usual reflection feels.
I’m coming to the end of my Rippling Year, and as I think about what ripples leave behind, it's a pretty minimal footprint. As it should be with ripples. That's part of their beauty, and the ephemerality of ripples is part of what called me to that word at the end of last year. I'm always fascinated by the power of things that are experienced in the moment and then recede into your past without being able to tangibly hold onto them. So perhaps it’s not much of a surprise that I’m feeling more inclined to let this year slip away without lots of attention paid to Marking It.
I've been thinking about what I do want my Rippling Year to leave behind, about how I do want to wrap up this year where I've asked myself What is my center, and what am I spreading?, this year whose seasonal quarters have been guided by these words:
Q1: measured open attention (center reflection, spread ease)
Q2: curious playful unfolding (center play, spread adventure)
Q3: strategic pirate cycles (center rest, spread alternative points of view)
Q4: brave evolving leader (center self-awareness, spread directing my own sails)
And what I thought might be a fitting way to see this year out in a fallow hibernatory period of time is to write an Obituary for My Rippling Year.
Obits can be beautiful and poignant and laudatory and sad, and they're usually worth a read (says the woman who also likes visiting cemeteries for many of the same reasons). So here goes my attempt to memorialize what this year has been for me in a way that’s satisfactorily summarizing without circling in endless analysis.
2024: My Rippling Year (age 1)
It is time to bid farewell to my Rippling Year. On December 31, 2024, it will slip silently away, easing into the past and making way for the new year to come. It was a year marked by experiments—some worked, some didn't—and explorations, by new opportunities and deepening practice, by grand challenges and familiar paths.
The year lived up to its name with stones cast into the professional ponds of organizations across the breadth of the United States and beyond. It demonstrated dedicated service for institutional clients including the MFA Boston, Oklahoma Contemporary Art Center, Guggenheim, Chrysler Museum of Art, and the Denver Art Museum. These professional ripples extended even further into the facilitation waters of San Diego for the Teen Science Cafe Network's community gathering as part of the STEM Next Girls Build Solutions conference.
2024's legacy also includes the successful nurturing of an array of independent projects. I wrapped up one cohort of CARE (my membership community) and began another, each with a mix of returning creative entrepreneurs and new folks. The SEED Trio blossomed from a meeting of the minds into actual, successful offerings out in the world. Rebecca Shulman, David Bowles, and I convened SEED:Baltimore—a workshop-based community for managers of gallery educators—over one full-day session and six virtual gatherings, and the 20+ people who joined us were a beacon of support for each other. Karla Aguilar Velasquez, a manager at the St. Louis Art Museum, summarized the program with these words:
"Attending these sessions while transitioning to my new position as a volunteer supervisor has been extremely helpful in allowing me to pause the day-to-day routine and actually reflect on what kind of manager I am and how I can adapt my management style to meet the necessities of my Museum. I believed more in myself as a leader and educator after every meeting!"
And so we spread our SEED collaborations further, offering two free SEED:Provocation webinars (one about how to run good meetings, one about what public tours are really for in museums today) and registration for SEED:Management, which we'll be hosting in New York City on January 13 for managers in cultural organizations to develop their managerial chops.
Rebecca recently summarized the joy of SEED as stemming from three people who are good leaders focusing on articulating what makes that true, and figuring out together how to teach it to other people in ways that are fun and lasting. My Rippling Year reminded me that I process best when I do it with others and that I find joy in community. It was a year that brought me into at least 11 different networks of learners, and for that I thank the (now-sunsetted) Lifestyle Business League, Creative Mornings, Anne Ditmeyer, Museums As Progress, the Radical Rest Network, the Maintainers, the Independent Museum Professionals network, the Interweb, Wellesley College's alumnae affinity program, and two groups of other consultants that we've dubbed "The Rising Tide" and "Museum Fixers".
My Rippling Year was known for its opportunities to both attend and speak at conferences, including the American Alliance of Museums (which I did pirate style), the Museum Computer Network, the Future of Museums Summit, and the New England Museum Association, where I offered others some card-based grief processing of the presidential election results. The creativity and joy of collaborating with Isabella Bruno for A Speculative Leap into the Future of Museum Workplace Well-being left ripples spreading that I hope will reach meaningful shores.
My Rippling Year began with the intention to cast out stones of ideas and influence and to let go of my need to know where the ripples would end up. That said, a rippling moment that will stay with me was the note I received from someone I pulled a card for (from my Artists' Grief Deck) in which they thanked me after the fact.
"I just wanted to thank you again for holding space for me last week at NEMA. It was a complex day for a variety of reasons and while we were collectively grieving, I was also personally grieving... The realization took me by surprise and your card deck was exactly what I needed in that moment. Keep fighting the good fight out there."
Although it might not have been her intention, part of the legacy my Rippling Year leaves behind is the reminder that, even when I don't quite attain my income goal (I made it just over 85% of the way there) or apply for a part-time job and don't get it or create a new course offering that doesn't land as I'd hoped or volunteer a free facilitation that's not accepted (all stones cast out in 2024 that sunk without making any obvious ripples at all), I truly have no way of knowing when and where the unseen ripples may have impact. This was the year that really cemented that in my body.
My Rippling Year will not be remembered for business alone, but also as a year of balance between work and more-than-work priorities. It was the year I applied for my first residency (fingers crossed, I should find out in mid-January of 2025), the year I made it to the theater for eight different plays (Gatsby; Network; Suffs; Oh, Mary!; Our Town; Swept Away; Waiting for Godot; and Operation Mincemeat for the theater-curious) and one pop-music/performance art hybrid show (The 1975 at the O2), the year I audited a class about Asian/American Women in Film at my undergrad alma mater and enrolled in Oren Jay Sofer's Wise Speech: An Introduction to Nonviolent Communication course. It was a year of reading 52 books and listening to two months worth of podcasts across 77 shows. It was a year of making sure I got regular exercise and sleep and meditation, a year of playing with the dog, and a year of baking all sorts of new recipes.
2024 leaves behind the memories of its travel wonders, both near and far, both solo and in company. It was a year of adventures across 11 USA states: as near as to my own driveway for the Northern lights, to Rhode Island for the NEMA conference, to Vermont for the total solar eclipse, and to Maine for my annual reading retreat. And as far as to San Diego for beach-side facilitation, to Louisiana for connection with college friends, to New Mexico for an incredibly immersive bucket-list visit to Walter de Maria's The Lightning Field, and to Colorado for 75 miles of backpacking along the Colorado Trail.
My Rippling Year touched four countries: Mexico for a friend's milestone birthday, Scotland for festive holiday season hijinks before another friend moves away, and England—twice—for a series of excellent exhibitions shedding much-needed public light on the British Empire's colonial past (Entangled Pasts at the Royal Academy, El Anatsui's Behind the Red Moon at the Tate Turbine Hall, and Hew Locke's what have we here? at the British Museum). Not to mention the British Library's Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which provided a most excellent bit of witchfinder-related museum interpretation (please do enlarge the images to see the 🍆🍆 details).
The march of time, however, carried on as it does, through personal and global roller coaster ups and downs.
At the wise and respected age of 51 weeks, my Rippling Year has seen the end nearing and has now entered her final days, preparing to depart this world at home, in comfort. She leaves behind a footprint of rich and challenging experiences of awe, of growth, and of personal and professional self-doubt. She touched many people's lives, and she is survived by numerous enriched relationships, strengthened working practices, and new-forged pathways in creative entrepreneurship.
In lieu of flowers, my Rippling Year’s family requests that you continue her legacy of curiosity, community building, and finding new ways to address problems (or, you know, aid a pirate at my Ko-fi link below 😉).
Services for my Rippling Year will be held at 11:59:59pm on December 31, 2024. Wherever you are, you’re invited to celebrate her with fireworks and sparkling beverages and the knowledge that she’ll live on in the hearts and memories of all those who contributed to her remarkable journey.
Creative Prompt Coda: Write about your 2024 in the style of an obituary. You don’t have to share it, but you can definitely reply here or send it to me if you want to.
