Surrendering to Enough

Every year, I love the process of reflecting on the changing of one year to the next. I've got a lot of tools in my rotation to do this reflecting, and most years, I have a little voice in my head saying I should be using all of them to do the most complete, most perfect year transition reflection. (If you've been around long enough that you've heard me mention naming my inner critic Should-erella, this is why. She tends to chime in around the new year.

But as 2025 (My Ballast Year) came to a close, and 2026 began, I was—like I'm sure many of you are—tired. And also filled with a refreshing spirit of acceptance and surrender.

I saw the end of last year out with some dear friends, great food, house party karaoke, and an enormous bonfire and fireworks in the snowy Vermont hills.

I pulled a tarot card for myself in answer to the question What do I want to call in for 2026?

Up came Temperance (finding a middle way, balance, allowing for nuance, calm).

I chose my word of the year for 2026: Attunement.

It appeared without me having to sit down for the brainstorm session and freewrite that I usually set aside to come up with my word of the year.

I came home from New Year's in Vermont and made myself a vision board, and it felt like a settling, soothing afternoon of arts and crafts.

I also did the thing I've been meaning to do for a few years and made a 2025 year-in-review graphic as a way of charting where I was ship and anchor throughout my Ballast Year.

Click through if you're curious about what actually happened as I tried to find stability in uncertain times.

And then I gave myself permission to let that be enough. These were the rituals I used in this odd, upsetting, exhausting moment to see out one year and see in the next. And Should-erella stayed quiet.

There was no internal voice telling me I should be doing more and better.

Just a quiet acceptance that this was what felt satisfying, and there's no need to force myself into anything more.

The Year of Attunement

Frankly, I feel like this way of turning over the year is all very much in keeping with the 2026 I hope to have.

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.

After four years of entrepreneurship where I've tried relentlessly to avoid the harmful practices of business as usual, I want more peace.

After a 2025 of cultural organizations in tumult where my greatest growth edge was building sustainable offers to individual clients, I'm ready for work to include more calm.

As I wrote in an adrienne maree brown guided new-year-spell-casting session:

I will carry no more spaghetti to throw
My arms are tired and my walls stained

This is a year to streamline and hone. To make projects templated and repeatable. To stop expending all my energy on new invention.

It's not a year for innovation. It's a year for maintenance.

My Four-Value Filter

To help all this happen, I made myself a handy attunement-minded flow chart.

It's my attempt to consider each new project idea (whether it's my own or a proposal from a client or collaborator) against each of the 4 values I'm holding as my current core.

Does this opportunity allow me to be

• collaborative

• curious

• playful

• strategic

If it only meets 1, it's a NO.

If it meets 2, I need a compelling reason to do it.

If it meets 3, it's a maybe, depending on the context.

If it meets all 4, it's a YES.

Without spilling too many beans, I've already used this to evaluate a proposal that I hope is going to lead to a fun and interesting collaborative project coming later this year. (spoiler alert there for at least one of the values it definitely meets)

Sunsetting with Intention

On the other side of that Attunement, there are, of course, some things that don't make sense to keep in my portfolio as it evolves.

I have loved the management training work I've done as part of the SEED Trio for the past three years. Rebecca and David and I have led three cohorts for nearly 50 museum managers. We've facilitated skill building, self reflection, and leadership development that has been fun for us and for them (gasp!). At least two of them have changed jobs and are now working for other cohort members!

We've offered free, experiential sessions online for more than 175 folks working to make museums better.

And while we still love working together, and we're still eager to bring our training to individual organizations and associations that want to hire us, it's time for us all to prioritize other projects.

We'll be running this year's Gallery Education Leadership Institute in Baltimore from January 28-30, 2026, and this one will be our swan song. (PSA: if you're thinking of joining us, registration closes on January 16… this Friday)

I'm incredibly proud of all three of us for being able to articulate that we can find so much reward in our collaborations and still need to let this aspect of it go.

Each of us have different portfolios of interesting work, and we've decided that we need to focus on where we can do that work most directly, without siphoning its energy off into the necessary marketing and IT and graphic design work that is ultimately, not where any of our hearts lie.

As Jonny Sun said in the final issue of his charming newsletter, A Small List of Knowable Things:

Sometimes, that easier route is to keep going with something that is set up to feel routine and regular and like the default option, and that easier route keeps you away from the more difficult route of ending it in order to make space for something — or even just the promise of something — else.

And all I can say about that is to try to be intentional about where you give your time and attention and care, as much as you can.

Here's to right-sizing our projects when we need to!

Letters from Past Selves

Just as I was easing into this new year, a kind of email showed up in my inbox that always delights me.

It's from me, last year, writing via FutureMe to myself a year in the future.

Dear FutureMe,

I hope you have found some stability and centering when you read this. I hope the year's brought you the kind of ballast you were dreaming of: where stability and security can allow for flights of fancy and adventure.

I hope you've been somewhere new.

I hope you've been proud of your accomplishments, large and small the way you were in 2024, and that you've offered some new professional something or other, too.

I hope the residency happened (or if not, that you found another place to work on the book idea).

I hope you're feeling OK about your financial situation and that you're doing enough experimentation to feel satisfied.

I hope you've spent more time with friends and done some new social things, too, without forcing your life to get busier and more crowded than the slow day-to-day nice routine.

Whatever's happened, I'm proud of how you keep showing up for the uncertainties of your life, and whatever 2025 has brought, I'm proud of you for handling it with open eyes.

Love,
PastMe

Did all those things I was dreaming of happen? Nope.

• went somewhere new? not a new location, no, though yes, some new individual places

• residency? didn't get it (book idea: still pondering)

• new professional offering? yes! the pilot round of Wayfinder is up and running

• financial situation? in all honesty, this one's more precarious now than a year ago

• satisfying amount of experimentation? always!

• social time balanced with quiet routine? yes (though room for more in 2026)

That ending sentence, though? That's the one that made me smile at PastMe and PresentMe both. It's a sentiment I'll hold onto as this Year of Attunement gets underway.

I'm proud of how you keep showing up for the uncertainties of your life, and whatever 2025 has brought, I'm proud of you for handling it with open eyes.

The uncertainties aren't going anywhere.

But since 2025 was the year where I solidified my 1-sentence description of what I do as:

I guide curious people and their organizations to dance with uncertainty and change

then I think I'm in the place where I need to be to see how that plays out in the ever-uncertain months to come.

PS–In my ongoing quest to make my work feel attuned to my values, I'm experimenting with pulling a tarot card to help direct my writings to you. The card I pulled this time was the 9 of Wands.

Are you curious to see what cards get drawn for future posts? Let me know with a reply to this email. (Just an A or B is fine.)

A. I'm a tarot head (or at least tarot curious). Show me the cards!

B. Nah, don't need 'em.