My Little Dark Age
It is the newest year! I barely shared my thoughts on improv and healthcare in 2024! I was in a good rhythm at the start of the year but then I entered a bit of a little dark age around April.
It is unfortunate that I feel like the new year is the only opportunity to stop, take a breath, reset, and recommit to living the principles of improv as a way to make life better rather than to just help me get by. The goal is that the principles of improv can be used in the moment to keep moving my life in the direction of my principles no matter what unexpected events and scenarios come down the pike. With that vagueness laid out, we can explore my specific events of 2024 along with exploring if the lessons could be generalized for you, the dearest reader
First, I will say that this past year has been the most successful year yet for Healthcare Improv as an entity that engages in educational and entertaining programs for individuals and groups in the areas of communication, wellness, and leadership. I keep track of encounters each month and October 2024 was the most encounters since I started keeping track. November 2024 was >4x October 2024 encounters.
The most people we have ever led in improv activities at one time! Thank you American College of Surgeons TQIP 2024 Conference!!!!
I nurtured relationships with groups that I have worked with since the beginning. I created four brand new workshops that fit in very well with the existing workshops. I spoke at an Internal Medicine Grand Rounds at another institution. I did an online keynote talk. I did an in-person keynote talk (see above). These experiences were incredible, and I felt joy throughout the process of planning and executing each of those events described above and many more. I can’t describe the rush of adrenaline that I get in just the planning of these events. That was one great part of 2024
The matrix of my life includes more than just my Healthcare Improv activities and unfortunately, many of those aspects took significant hits over the course of the year, stated in the most euphemistic way possible. These blows will likely define the year for me despite the newness, joy, and successes described above. My oldest sister passed away after a prolonged and difficult hospitalization. I have not processed that satisfactorily and do not have any take aways worth sharing at this point from that specific part of 2024. The other negative events of my life last year were all manageable events, especially if they were in isolation. Things like our dog requiring emergency (and expensive) surgery that forced us to cancel a family trip, some unexpected bills dropping all at once (shortly after that expensive dog surgery no less), my main job as a hospitalist changing in a way that limited the most meaningful parts of my duties, getting some of the worst annual feedback I have received from learners this past year, and all sorts of smaller examples that painted a picture of things not working personally or professionally. Again those smaller examples on their own would be just fine, but with the background of the other events, I created scenes of doom in my head. Then I went out into the world and interact as if those scenes are true in real life, which compounded my problems since I was in several scenes of my life that didn’t carry that gloom.
I drove with my four sons from Omaha, NE to Maine. They wanted me to pull over so they could walk across the Maine state line. They are a fun crew!
With that buffet of things to complain about and me being someone who espouses the benefits of taking improv principles into real life, it did present some challenges. I navigated that challenge and did come up with some conclusions. Figuring out how I was going to present this slide has helped me explore how improv could help me in these difficult moments of life.
This slide was made sometime in 2023, but was presented in 2024
I have stated it before but I will reiterate that I don’t think improv is the answer when someone is in need of professional help. I was not quite to that level while struggling with life events last year. The line in the slide above that gave me pause is “Our biggest challenges are often our biggest opportunity to grow”. Some of the challenges I described above were opportunities to grow, but the passing of my sister has yet to provide me with an opportunity to grow. I don’t know when or if the loss of my sister will ever provide anything that I am thankful enough that it will even register compared to the sense of loss for me and my family. I know our family is not unique in this event nor are the series of other unfortunate events in my life unique to me or even this year, so that makes me question the idea of “learning to grow from difficult events” all together. The rest of my negative events of 2024 did provide learning opportunities after some reflection, but the loss of my sister may never be a learning opportunity. That is my takeaway. I don’t have to find growth in every bad thing that happens, but I should investigate. Improv sets me up to believe this to be true because the same is asked of me when looking at my improv performances, albeit with incredibly lower stakes. Because one scene sucks, doesn’t mean the next one is going to. Because one show sucks, doesn’t mean the next show is going to suck. Sometimes a show sucks so bad, I have to not think about it for a while and revisit it after some time has passed in order to learn from it. This has been a struggle for me for most of last year and I suspect I will still be wrestling with these ideas for most of 2025 and onward. The skills and practice of improv is a silly way to open me up to exploring the way forward rather than ignoring it and just accepting some of my more maladaptive responses to it. Also the improv mindset is much more helpful than simply reminding myself that it can always get shittier, which was my approach for most of the year.
The other lesson from the year is the mental effort it takes to take this improv mindset into everyday life, to say nothing of taking this mindset when I don’t like the cards being dealt. The picture of the man in the slide above is Archilochus and I said his quote at every workshop I did last year. He is credited with saying “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of training”. Improv certainly takes mental effort and the mental effort is practiced in unknown and uncertain circumstances. The first book I read/listen to every year is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and the quote that stuck out from 2025’s reading was…
““Life is short, profit from the present moment by the aid of reason and justice””
Those two phrases really describe my mindset as 2025 begins. I have ambitious goals for all aspects of my life but it all shrinks down to figuring out how to practice reason and justice in each moment to grow and be ready for all of the events and experiences of 2025.
““Good fortune is something you assign yourself” ”
More to come for 2025!