4th rantiversary/44th birthday thoughts

Happy New Year! Today, I am celebrating my 44th birthday and the 4th anniversary of Disrupt For Good, started so long ago now with my New Year’s Revolution/40th Birthday Manifesto.

We’ve covered a lot of ground together in those four years, and more recently, our discussion has centred around what I think are some key shifts we need to make together to be most impactful in our work and to continue doing the disruptive work of creating the society we want to live in. 

As I wrote in April, “These shifts are ultimately about doing things differently so that we can take a more sustained approach (and avoid burnout). It’s more sustainable for us and a more compelling invitation to the broader community into a movement of movements. It’s an antidote to apathy and helps us find our unique role in social change. And along the way, it will probably produce better outcomes.”

My friend Tanya rather generously calls these shifts the framework of my thought scholarship. (Get yourself a Tanya if you can - one of her roles in my life is to hold a bigger vision for me than I can see for myself and remind me of it regularly.)

In the last year, I’ve shared my experiences of shifting from certainty to curiosity, from activism to organizing, and from problem-solving to possibility-imagining. We’ve explored navigating our individual roles in disrupting for good, the narrative-change strategy of anchoring, the importance of knowing what kind of conversation we are in, disrupting inevitability, and the term acuerpar.

2025 and my word of the year
So much bad stuff happened in the fall of 2024. And I do advocacy work in 3 sectors, so calls to react came at me from every direction. 

Every issue was positioned as urgent (even the ones that were clearly distractions), and the expectation seemed to be that we would all light our hair on fire for each. In fact, “I’m not going to light my hair on fire for this” became a shorthand in a few of my circles through November and December. 

Even though I knew I was close to burnt out and that a letter from me wouldn’t be the thing that made Doug Ford reconsider his potential use of the Notwithstanding Clause, I was receiving pressure to do more. 

And then Tanya (yes, the same Tanya) reminded me that one of my superpowers is staying calm in chaos and responding, not reacting. That’s a big part of my specific role in this collective social change work. I want to bring that energy into 2025 because we have some pretty big battles on the horizon, and social change is a long game. 

So my word of the year is flow. I asked ChatGPT to help me come up with a word that means staying calmly rooted in values, principles, and purpose, moving forward in a steady-handed manner but with the ability to adjust course with ease. 

ChatGPT told me, “Flow can convey both ease and movement, while also implying a sense of stability and adaptability. In this context, flow doesn’t just mean being passive or drifting aimlessly; it suggests a dynamic state where someone or something can move effortlessly through changes, adjusting to circumstances while maintaining a core sense of direction and purpose.” 

So that’s me in 2025, and as a 44-year-old. Flowing like a mighty river and finding a way through. Watch out. 

Do you have a word of the year for 2025? I'd love to hear it. Cheers to another year of disrupting for good.