enter the new year

I imagine evaluators are reflective people by default, whether by nature or practice. I definitely find myself obsessed with milestones and checking back to think about what changes and progress I’ve made in whatever timespan I’m reflecting on. The end of the Gregorian calendar year is a very exciting time for me! This one in particular because I’m coming up on my five-year anniversary of moving to Vancouver, which means catching up on my five-year plan that I had when I came out here. (People are sometimes very impressed when I say that I moved to Vancouver with a five-year plan and then I tell them the plan was, “check in at five years and see how things are going and if I should keep sticking it out or not”. Very developmental!) I’m happy to report that my hope to have some form of sustaining work with a promising future and not an over-bearing cost of living on top of it was well-exceeded by year four, so year five has been nothing but bonus learning and discoveries!

This year has been one of the most transformative of my life. I’m writing this at the end of a holiday home in Ontario where I’ve been seeing lots of family, and have gotten feedback that they notice a difference in me, even in my presence and how I carry myself (thank you, Alexander Technique!). It’s exciting and intimidating. I’ve also had a few people this year reference how I’ve seemed to “find my voice”, but I don’t think I’m done with that yet. I think I’ve got a lot more transformation to come. In the words of a wise sage from my youth, “This isn’t even my final form!”

I feel similarly about evaluation itself as a field and a practice. We are stretching, learning, pushing, and transforming, holding up the familiar to a series of critical lenses and asking ourselves and each other to try different ways of evaluative thinking and being than the ones we are most comfortable and practiced with. We’re asking questions about what evaluation is for, and who, and what it takes to do it. I’m both alive with the energetic possibility of it all, and a little overwhelmed by the responsibility and urgency of it too.

One of the on-going conversations I’ve had this year is with a friend who talks about risk and taking risks and how and why we do, not because we aren’t scared but because we want it enough we can’t imagine not doing it, whether it’s launching ourselves off a mountain (she’s a paraglider), falling in love, or upending our professional practice. I’ve been playing with risks all year, scaling my way up along the intimidating rock face of my fears and insecurities, looking for a path I’m capable of following, that isn’t too hard, while still taking me higher and higher. I like a rock-climbing metaphor because it’s a reminder that pursuit of risk shouldn’t be reckless. Anxious paralysis can be an obstacle to innovation and change, but fear and caution are gifts too. There are real dangers to be minded and navigated, and launching forward with headlong abandon (a tempting antidote to years of timid hesitation) can produce disastrous results. Particularly as an evaluator, my responsibilities are not just for my own concerns but for everything and everyone my work impacts. This isn’t an argument for halting, half-hearted ‘progress’ though—change is needed and the pressures are real—but a reminder that leaps of faith can be thoughtful and calculated in their own way. Paragliders test the wind and chose their moments.

Standing at the precipice of a new year though, I’m still invigorated by the uncertainty. In 2019, I learned to relax into the not-knowingness of it all by deepening my trust in myself and in the capacity of human resilience and love to see things through regardless. I took many risks, only some of them reckless. I opened myself up to possibility and imagination, sometimes plunging and sometimes wading, always swimming deeper and deeper. I’m full of plots and plans and schemes for 2020 and I have no idea which, if any, will actually come to fruition as intended by 2021. I kind of hope they all surprise me.