One of the advantages of having a birthday just days before the end of the calendar year is that it provides a convenient opportunity to reflect on both endpoints at roughly the same time.

So it is that today I take a look back at some of the things I accomplished during my 44th year, which happened to coincide nicely with the beginning and end of 2019, give or take a few days.

I have continued to write for both The Hollywood Reporter and Adweek, both of which bring me great joy. Seeing my byline on those sites never stops being a thrill and it’s one I hope to continue into the new year and potentially add on to.

I have continued to freelance, handling a number of clients and projects and hopefully doing so well. Some of those clients have been new, some have been continuations of long term relationships. Each new project continues to push me as a writer in new ways.

I have finished writing my first non-fiction book, though currently it’s not going to see the light of day in that form. Again, writing in this way was something I’d never done before and forced me to think about how to structure my writing in new and interesting ways.

I kept chipping away at other personal writing projects, some of which have been going on for some time but which keep getting closer to *an* ending, if not *the* ending.

I was promoted to the position of Shift Supervisor at Starbucks, opening up new opportunities in that area and continuing to provide me with new challenges.

I kept on keeping on in many other areas of my life, which is more than a lot of people would be capable of saying.

For Cinematic Slant I wrote over 200 posts with a total of over 175,000 words.

For this site I wrote over 90 posts with a total of over 34,000 words.

We keep moving forward, we keep working hard, we keep doing what we need to do.

That was 44. It was, as every year has been, a roller coaster at times. The next will likely be no different.