There’s this moment in Teapot: Existential Angst & the Search for Purpose at the Dawn of the Millennium when I talk about the grief of being let go from a temporary job, how, at the end of the day, I didn’t even have a desk to pack up.
[Sidebar: I’ve always felt a gutpunch with pop culture moments where a person who’s been fired forlornly walks to their car with a meager box of mementos. Might relate to the itinerate nature of how I grew up and always wanting to know where my sense of place is, like a GPS constantly “recalculating.” For so long during the two-year period my show covers, just getting to a job where I had my own desk felt like the ultimate dream!!]
Which is why, in the moment I illustrate, when I got fired, it felt so insulting there was no desk–just my “invisible bag of tricks.”
Over the course of this year, thanks to some creative coaching by a dear friend and mentor, I’ve now visibilized the invisible bag of tricks as part of the show–all the skills and lessons I was picking up along the way. Sometimes those things are good, sometimes bad. Sometimes we have to learn how to let them go or re-metabolize them in a new way.
This year, I’ve been learning how to appreciate the bag of tricks I carry in radical new ways. Whether that’s foregrounding myself as a storyteller as much as a story coach, or appreciating that the space I hold for myself and others to breathe and cry, be present and heal a little is always, always, ALWAYS, more important than the to-do list.
With that, my friends, I present to you…the 2025 Annual Report.
I’ve said this for NINE years (yep, look out–next one’s gonna be a DOOZY!) in a row now, but I love how creating and sending the Annual Report / my newsletter inspires conversations with you all. Please talk back, ask questions, share feedback, tell me what you’re seeing in the work.
What are you learning about your own invisible bag of tricks? What’s good in there that you can appreciate like never before? And what do you maybe need to let go of?
Onward…to the great big next,
Shannon