Mid-December, when it often seems like no one else is working, is a great time to take stock of the year that is ending and to begin to plan for the upcoming year. Luckily, holiday activities like baking, cleaning, wrapping, and taking long walks to work off all the candy and cookies are perfectly suited to pondering both your past and your future.

Though I frequently felt like I was spending a fair amount of time struggling with various issues in 2015, it turns out that, despite all the things I lost this year, I gained quite a few as well. Some of my accomplishments include:

• Attending the Tucson Book Festival and spending the weekend rocking out to the Rock Bottom Remainders literary band, listening to my favorite authors talk about writing and their prolific careers, and attending my first teen poetry slam

Marja Mills discusses her book The Mockingbird Next Door at the Tuscon Book Festival.

• Being brave enough to read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman and then taking the time to think about what it means in relation to To Kill a Mockingbird and what Lee was sharing with us by finally releasing it
• Taking my own personal five-day writing retreat on Cape Cod where I camped alone and spent five solitary days doing nothing but reading, writing, and swimming. It was harder than I expected and I even contemplated leaving one day. But I stuck it out and learned a lot about myself in the process, along with regaining some of the confidence and faith in my abilities that I’d lost
• Reviewing some amazing plays at the Kitchen Theatre Company
• Having the opportunity to hear, and write about, many fascinating people including Dr. Ben Carson and a WWII veteran who was still waterskiing well into his eighties
• Participating in several rounds of Writing Aerobics at Writers & Books in Rochester
• Passing the 280 mark in blog posts written and the 500 mark in LinkedIn connections
• Getting on Twitter and learning how to Tweet
• Keeping a travel journal
• Receiving a publishing contract for the nonfiction book I’m coauthoring with a college admissions consultant, due out in 2016

That’s not bad at all! What are the things you are proud of doing in 2015?