I've picked Attunement as my word of the year for its senses of harmonizing with another's state and put in desirable condition and the post-Industrial-Revolution set a machine in order for work.

2025 is My Ballast Year.
Ballast is 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.

I thought I’d see this year out in a fallow, hibernatory period of time is to write an Obituary for My Rippling Year.

Here’s my attempt to memorialize what this year has been for me in a way that’s satisfactorily summarizing without circling in endless analysis.

The word I’m centering for 2024 is RIPPLING.

Ripples make change gently and from small beginnings. They can’t happen alone. Rippling is a collective enterprise, and it touches more than it starts with. More than its source can ever know.

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.

And I’m doing it by hosting a drop-in Year End Reflection Session that you can join.

The cornucopia spirit is one of bounty and flourishing, where nourishment can be found for the mind, body, heart, and bank account. For those who choose to partake omnivorously, compassionate thriving and a suite of surprises await.

This is the new sign that crowns my bulletin board. It’s pronounced poh’-lay poh’-lay, and it’s the Kiswahili word for “slowly”. It’s come home with me from the fabulously immersive two-week trip to Tanzania I just took with my Mom.

Percolate: My ideas have been steeping and infusing me with plans like the rich red-brown of tea leaves curling through hot water.

Cultivate: Cultivating requires action, but it can’t be rushed. It can only happen at the pace the plant is ready for. And when done steady and well, it’s what creates those resilient, tender-firm, green, little shoots that poke their heads up toward the sun and thrive.

To me, this word says change while leaving room for multiple possibilities. It says tear-down-the-Bastille radicalism and steadfast growth over time. It says spinning something on its head to see it from a new perspective, and it says changing form until things look entirely new. It includes room for power, the energetic force that keeps things moving and power, the quiet dedication that wears away stubborn resistance bit by bit.

It’s change as a lightning bolt and as a slow drip of water on rock.