Year-end reflection for 2023: Successes

I love par­tic­i­pat­ing in chil­dren’s author Julie Hed­lund’s 12 Days of Christ­mas for Writ­ers as part of my year-end reflec­tion and new year goal-set­ting process. Day 3 of the series is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reflect on our suc­cess­es dur­ing the past year. 

Here is my pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess list for 2023:

• I signed a con­tract for a new pic­ture book and deliv­ered the final man­u­script text.
• I draft­ed an infor­ma­tion­al fic­tion pic­ture book I’ve had in my head for quite a while (but am still work­ing on).
• I re-envi­sioned and re-draft­ed an old­er infor­ma­tion­al fic­tion pic­ture book man­u­script I’ve been work­ing on for a long time (and am still work­ing on).
• I fin­ished revis­ing a non­fic­tion pic­ture book manuscript.
• I took Elana K. Arnold’s Revi­sion Sea­son course and did sev­er­al revi­sion pass­es on my first-ever nov­el (and still have more revis­ing to do).
• I did a ton of pro­mo­tion for my new books, You Are a Hon­ey Bee! and You Are a Raccoon!
• I deliv­ered many school vis­its and appearances.
• I updat­ed my school vis­it presentations.
• I updat­ed my web­site with the new book infor­ma­tion and speak­ing details.

Per­son­al­ly, I also:

• spent a lot of qual­i­ty time with my adult children,
• vol­un­teered as a nat­u­ral­ist with my city’s parks department,
• vol­un­teered in a vari­ety of roles with Cit­i­zens Cli­mate Lob­by, includ­ing lob­by­ing Con­gress (twice!) to take action to pro­tect our climate,
• got CPR cer­ti­fied, and
• took not one but two dream vacations!

I often feel like I’m not get­ting enough done, like I’m not work­ing hard enough, like noth­ing is hap­pen­ing. It’s good to look back and see, wow, actu­al­ly, it was a pret­ty good year!