Being Ship and Anchor for My Ballast Year
Hi. It's 2025. We're here.
We're here, and I don't know about you, but I am tired, friends.
I'm tired of seeing people whose rights are the most precarious having them increasingly threatened and taken away.
I'm tired of seeing people who've taken their rights for granted being pardoned and promoted for their violence and hate.
I'm tired of living in a moment where my country can—on the same day—inaugurate a president who encourages individual greed, grievance, and fear and claim to celebrate an esteemed and visionary Civil Rights leader (or, at least, the two-dimensional public image of him) who persisted through cycles of this same hatred more than half a century ago.
I'm tired of feeling like society seems to be regressing in ways that are hard to see past, they loom so large.
I'm tired.
*sigh*
I'm here to say that fatigue is real, even for me who carries a whole bunch of privileges and safety nets that protect me from facing the harshest brunt of this regressive turn.
The fatigue is real, and I don't want to hide it away or ignore it.
That doesn't mean I'm sticking my head in the sand or throwing in the towel on trying to make good change and good trouble in the world, though.
I'm tired, so I'll rest. And then I'll get back up and keep on going.
I wrote in my last post that I wasn't feeling my usual inspiration to reflect on the changing of the year, but part of how you stay out from under the trampling feet of oppression and fear-mongering is to not let the bastards—proverbial or otherwise—grind you down.
I'm filtering my news sources and spending less and less time on social media. I'm using tech roadblocks like the One Sec app and my phone's Screen Time and Downtime settings to create intentional friction in how I use my devices. I don't have a smart watch, I'm not using AI to write for me (on this or any other blog post, unless I let you know).
And even though my fatigue with *waves hands* all this is a small drop in the ocean of grief, fear, and hurt many are feeling right now, I'm using it as an example here for how I've been keeping on keeping on, even if my first desire is to shut down.
That fatigue with the world has fed right into my lack of investment in the year transition process that usually brings me great satisfaction, but I've been working through it, anyway.
And it's helped. The keeping on has led me to some clarity that's helped.
I'll share the process I use in a couple weeks in my next Recs for Successful Pirates email*, but for now I want to focus on what I've come to as my word of the year for 2025.
*[I share an original, non-AI-generated piece of writing directly with my newsletter subscribers every two weeks: it alternates between 1) a longer piece based on my monthly blog posts about the business (and life) path I'm forging for myself—that one's called Updates from the Captain's (B)log—and 2) a shorter message with a tangible business lesson from my recent work—that's Recs for Successful Pirates]
2025 is My Ballast Year.
I've given myself a word of the year since 2021 when I started out in business for myself.
2021 was Authenticity.
2022 was (R)EVOLUTION.
2023 was Cornucopia.
2024 was Rippling.
2025 is Ballast.
Toward the end of 2024, as I started thinking about what I wanted to call in for 2025, I found myself generating words like stability and balance and equilibrium. They weren't words that were sparking that "just right" Goldilocks feeling in my body, but they were clearly heading for something grounded, something calming, something focused and sustaining.
My life writ small and the world writ large are in such a state of professional, social, political, and ecological flux right now (high-key "The only lasting truth is Change" Parable of the Sower vibes). My last few years' words have all trafficked in ideas of movement and abundance and change and growth, and that's felt right. But now I find myself intentionally seeking the acceptance and stability and grounding that will allow me to flex and shift with what is to come.
The horse is back in the hospital, only this time with fewer horse wranglers or standard operating room procedures in place. Who knows what fresh chaos will ensue? Not I, that's for sure.
So in order to make my life meaningful and do the work of catalyzing good change in the face of unpredictability and anxiety, I need to find where I can be rooted enough to sway in the winds of whatever is coming without coming unmoored the way I did in 2020.
I hit on ballast during a free-writing session around these ideas, and I got the little zip-zing thrill across my shoulder blades that cued me into its rightness.
Eloi Smith on Unsplash
Ballast, as a noun, is literally "a heavy substance (such as rocks or water) placed in such a way as to improve stability and control". Metaphorically, it's "an attribute that tends to give stability in character and morals; something that steadies the mind or feelings".
Ballast, as a verb, is "to steady or equip with; to fill in".
Jens Rademacher on Unsplash
Ballast is what gets loaded into ships' hulls and hot air balloons' baskets to ensure they can move stably and fluidly. Ballast is also the gravel packed in around railroad tracks to hold them in place for trains to run smoothly.
What will keep me focused on where I can do the most good in the coming year? The ballast I'm working to lay in as the base of my life…
the ballast of strong, loving relationships with family and friends;
the ballast of a professional reputation for finding clever solutions to thorny problems;
the ballast of community building and relationship fostering;
the ballast of physical movement and sleep and sensory pleasures;
the ballast of rogueish, piratical refusals to accept inequities and injustices and find better ways forward.
Ballast is an idea with an inherent contradiction at its center—part of why I'm so enamored of it as a concept. It's a heavy substance that allows a train or balloon or boat to move smoothly. It's a stabilizing force that lets a vessel fly. It's a weight that enables freedom. It's a balance against capsizing.
So what movements and flights and freedoms will my ballast allow?
I'm hoping that, ballasted, I can…
explore new places, ideas, and ways of knowing the world;
stay open to curiosity and where possibilities may lead;
find the locked doors I'm uniquely positioned to open for others;
stay in the work of lighting new paths in dark times.
The balancing work of ballast, for me, is also about when I need to be bolstered up, and when I need to be the bolster for others.
When social and governmental systems can't be trusted to look out for us, we must look after each other. We must be each other's ballast.
It's on us to be the stabilizers for others to fly, and to take our turn flying when others offer us stability.
Ballast is a collective, communal concept. One stone does not hold steady the railroad track. One gallon of water does not keep the ship stably afloat. But if we can join together and share the load, then we can steady each other through the roiling uncertainty ahead. And we can each have a turn to find joy in steadying others and in flying ourselves.
Tricia Hersey is the latest in a long line of Black women to champion the essential nature of community care beautifully:
“Create community. Build community. Be community. Community care can seem impossible when you are exhausted. It is possible. Community is anywhere two or more are gathered. Two is still community. Don't rush to quantity as the marker of deep community and care. Don't rush to do anything alone. To be an escape artist is to be in the collective. Supported in rest, care, and love. Demand the collective as a source of inspiration and change. Real change comes from the people.” —Tricia Hersey, We Will Rest! The Art of Escape
Along with my word of the year (the map of which you can see above), I set myself a related guiding question, and this year's ballast-themed question to keep in mind is
How can I be my own ship and be others' anchor?
My quarterly framing of the year also comes with guiding words and this year I'm setting myself a pair of motivational phrases for each quarter that respond to that question in ways inspired by my Janine Antoni tattoo. Her words, inked on my arm, began with "I am tool and substance", and I'm adapting that for My Ballast Year into "I am ship and anchor".
Being the ship is how I'm thinking of my spontaneity, adventure, and freedom to make unconventional choices. It's what being ballasted will enable.
Being the anchor is for my focus on community care and connection. It's where I can be ballast for others.
For Q1, that looks like this:
I am ship: dream broadly
I am anchor: hold space
As the ship, I'm keeping my imagination open as to what this year might bring. Just yesterday, I had a day-long retreat with my SEED Trio collaborators to dream up our next moves. I've got a book idea in my head, and while I didn't get a residency I applied for to work on it, I'm still dreaming of a residency opportunity to work that dream into reality. Hell, there's a major pirate exhibition happening at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich this year that I'll need to make my way to.
And as the anchor, here are the commitments I'm making this year to help hold space for others and for community-mindedness:
I'm going to offer more public workshops (like Inauguration Transformation, the collaborative zine-making/collage-ing workshop series that began on Monday this week and concludes on Saturday) at low cost and openly available.
I'm going to minimize how much reinventing I do and try to re-purpose things and content I've already created.
I'm going to lean into collaboration. I'm going to try to prioritize doing things with other people over doing them myself.
You can hold me to those. Do you have a project that might need an additional heart/mind/set of hands to help it be its best? Reach out. Do you have experience spreading your talents to new audiences without re-creating from scratch? I'd love to hear your tips. Do you want to register for one of my offerings, but haven't seen one that felt like it fit yet? Stay tuned.
Brad Pearson on Unsplash
In the meantime, here's to finding some ballast where you can. I exercised this morning and then took a really lovely bath with some sage and peppermint essential oils, a mug of tea, and a book. Then I napped.
There's some nice ballasty moments right there. Use them for yourself or reply here and tell me what you do to stabilize yourself when you need it.
Creative Prompt Coda: Designate a particular object or space as a partner place for you to rest/escape in moments when it's needed. As Tricia Hersey says it, "Identify your sacred object. Do you have a couch? A favorite chair? A hammock? A yoga mat? A special blanket? A carpeted floor that becomes a massive rest space? Can you spend time on a porch sky gazing? Do you have an accessible outdoor area full of grass? I once napped every day on my lunch break at an oppressive call-center job in my car."
