Ballast Year Check-In, Pecha Kucha Style
It's been a while since I last wrote, and I've been busy in there. There are updates I'd like to share about work and reading and even how the caterpillar goo is developing, and none of those things seems to fit neatly together into a single themed post.
The longer I go with "blog post" on my to-do list, the list of updates has only grown more eclectic, and the more intimidating and overwhelming sitting down to write has become.
So in the spirit of my decision cues wheel, I'm giving myself some creative constraints to get this out to you.
Constraint 1: ABI (Always Be Illustrating)
For each section of updates I have to share, I'll also give you an image to go along with it. If I don't have a photo, I'll have to get metaphorical about those images.
Constraint 2: KISS (Keep It Short & Sweet)
In the spirit of pecha kucha, I'm setting a timer for each section of this post (including the introduction, here). 12 minutes only to write about each topic. Why 12? Because 10 felt short and 15 felt long, and after all, I get to set my own constraints.
Constraint 3: 1 Night Only
Whatever I can write in this one single sitting is what I can get out. I've got about an hour and a half (it's 3:20pm). Let's see how this goes.
Without further ado, and in no particular order, here's how My Ballast Year is going in early October.
Opening Doors & A New Marketing Voice
I've welcomed a new batch of fellow arts entrepreneurs into CARE!
This was the first time I opened the doors for new registration since I shifted from a seasonal cadence into an ongoing membership.
I'm congratulating myself on learning a whole bunch of marketing business lessons this go round.
I got in on the beta version of the excellent Nicole Cloutier's Open Loop program, which taught me so much helpful framing about how to tell engaging stories before launching.
I experimented with sending a series of emails about this in September, informed by Nicole's process and guidance.
Not only did these stories help more people determine that CARE is an option they wanted to join, but they also helped me clarify what CARE is really for and how to talk about that.
When we got to our first session with the new members this week, the honest conversation and communal support shone through. We talked about the fall seasonal archetypes we feel represent us. We broke down how we envisioned our 2025s playing out back at the start of the year, and then how they've actually played out. We talked through where those plans diverged and converged and how we want to align ourselves for the remaining months.
As someone who's never officially learned how to be my own marketing department, it was so incredibly helpful to have a process to work through, and now I feel much more resourced for repeating that for future launches.
For the first time, I felt like I was launching an offering with a level of professional communication that felt earnest and true (that part was always there before) and also carefully planned and thoughtfully considered.
The effort of launching doesn't feel so intimidating now that I feel like I've got a method instead of wildly trying whatever I can think of to try and connect with the right people.
Three Brains, Shared Profits, Abundant Collaboration
Along with my individual work supporting folks, I've also been gearing up to do some collaborative support work with the SEED Trio. Our management training and leadership development work continues to be something I'm really proud to offer.
Rebecca, David, and I have all shared that we miss having colleagues, and we're very happy to be each other's ongoing teammates. Since I started working on my own, I've committed to doing things collaboratively and communally where I can, instead of competing.
I talk about turning toward an abundance mindset instead of a scarcity one, and the SEED collaborations are truly that. We split all our profits three ways, and we're working with managers in non-profit organizations. It's not like I'm in this project for the big bucks.
I love how creatively and cleverly we iterate. I love how we share tasks. I love how the combination of three brains coming together gets to things I'd never get to on my own.
SEED has been one way I continue to give back to the museum education field that was my professional training ground.
This coming Monday, we’re hosting a free session for educators about how they can offer non-monetary benefits to their staff in a moment when fiscal certainty is in short supply.
In January we'll be hosting our multi-day Gallery Education Leadership Institute in Baltimore where museum ed managers can find a cohort of support to help their leadership skills flourish.
And we've got more exciting plans for other offerings in the pipeline.
It's a warm reminder that working outside a single institution lets me work how I want, offering what I want.
The Joy of Reading and Unmarketable Sketches
My annual reading retreat in Northern Maine was as decadent and appreciated this year as it always is.
I set a new record this year, reading 18 books in 3 weeks, and as I always do, I drew a little picture of each book cover. I love my little book sketches. They bring me so much joy without any kind of monetizable outcome. And each August I read so much that they get to become a fun little gif, too.
I'm shouting out two particular highlights that were my favorite from this year.
The Pretender, Jo Harkin
This is a rollicking, sprawling epic of a historical novel that tells the story of Lambert Simnel a real historical pretender to the throne in Tudor-era England. If you liked Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, I recommend giving this one a try. The protagonist (who goes by several different names throughout the book) has such a charming and compelling voice as he goes from a sweet, naive farm kid to a world-wise cynic steeped in the manipulative games of courtly life. This one's also for my fellow history-of-narrative nerds, as it overtly references and takes the form of a whole selection of different historical novelistic techniques.
Playground, Richard Powers
Did you love The Overstory? This is like that, except about the ocean instead of trees. But it's also about human consciousness and AI and the climate crisis and how play is a central element of human life. It goes both granularly familiar and galaxy-brain big-picture, and somehow manages to connect both those things compellingly.
If you missed it, I made a Notion site for all the books I brought with me to Maine this year. Take a look and see if there are others on there that tickle you.
The Goo Slowly Solidifies
A whole bunch of people wrote to me after I shared my caterpillar goo reality, saying how much they related, how they were in a similar place, and that they were finally able to put words to a feeling they'd had without a name.
My goo phase continues, and has been slowly resolidifying itself.
For My Ballast Year, I gave myself the guiding question "How can I be my own ship and be others' anchor?". For each quarter, I've got a different response to the dual prompt of I am ship and I am anchor. For Q4, that looks like
I am ship: find sunshine / I am anchor: model reflection.
I'll see how these two prompts influence the coming months for me.
For now, I've come to a recognition that I'm leaving behind the "throwing spaghetti at the wall" phase of my business that's been where I feel like I've lived for the past few years. I'm composting some offers in order to give energy to germinate others.
I'm seeing the outlines of what I hope will be a streamlined, sustainable portfolio of projects I can offer that won't make me feel like I'm reinventing the wheel with every new venture, and will still leave me room for new creative possibilities.
The goo is beginning to form a butterfly.
Deleting Apps & Building Supportive Guardrails
That streamlining I mentioned?
It's why I deleted my social media apps from my phone before my August reading retreat and haven't added any of them back. And I don't really miss 'em.
It's why I'm now using Buttondown instead of MailerLite to send emails. It's a platform that does what I need it to do without the visual bells and whistles and complications that meant me spending hours getting my emails to look just right before sending.
Knowing that I have a perfectionist tendency to dawdle over details indefinitely, I'm working on making decisions that encourage me to spend the most time on my most meaningful work. That means putting some creative constraint guardrails up for myself, and 2025 has been a year of working with some really helpful professional experts to get those guardrails established.
I've mentioned them before, but I appreciate Nicole's help with marketing (above) and Holly's help with tech stack streamlining, and Jenn's help to get my decision wheel—and its attendance mindset shifts—in place.
I appreciate Rebecca's help—along with the whole Reimagining Leadership cohort—with focusing how I want to show up as a leader and naming my caterpillar goo phase to begin with.
And I'll have more to say soon about what's coming out of Jessica's help, which has been leading me to build an offering I hope will find its right people when I start testing out its elements in the coming months.
It's been incredibly helpful to have outside voices helping me figure out what I want to spend my work time on, and how that can—hopefully—support a life that doesn't only revolve around work.
Building ‘Otherwise’ Worlds
So how is My Ballast Year going, here at the start of Q4?
Honestly, ballast has been a good word.
In a turbulent year of political fuckery, turning inward has given me the ability to ride the waves.
As many people are facing much more precarious lives than mine, I've had the space to hone in on what is uniquely mine to invent in the world.
I've been a facilitator and a holder of space for others to share their concerns and challenges; been the ballast that lets other people's boats stay afloat.
I've accepted some self-settling truths:
that I can find different satisfactions from different parts of my work
that not every project needs to provide the same kind of stimulation
that's it's OK to repeat things that work
that not every single thing I do needs to be invested with my newest and most revolutionary energies
I've tried to be my best graceful trickster rogue, pirating new solutions to broken systems.
As a beloved former colleague and mentor put it in a recent LinkedIn message, I'm "building an 'otherwise' world and collecting compatriots to join."
I'm not expecting the remaining months of 2025 to settle down any more than the year has so far, but I do feel well ballasted to meet what they bring.
And with that, it's 5:07pm, and my timer has sounded on my last 12-minute writing round.
May we all keep being graceful trickster rogues where we can be, and may you get some ballast where you need it.
