This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the Helping Writers Become Authors

podcast. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode A Writers New Year

Reflections or The Six Gifts I G I gave myself in 2021.

Another new year brings another new opportunity

for reflection and re-centering.

As I talk about nearly every year, my preference for the new year is to focus

less on resolutions for the year ahead and more on reflections of what I experienced and gained in the year past.

For me, as I think for many people, 2021 was full of challenges.

A year ago, I ended 2020 with the realization that in some

strange way it was almost one of the best years of my life. 2021 was certainly a momentous year, but it was a lot harder.

On the personal front, it was a year that started with a severe eye strain that lasted for months and severely limited my screen time,

followed by a re-injury of a disc in my back.

Then came a health scare with a close family member that shook me to my core, but which happily is

currently resolved.

And then in the fall I undertook my second major interstate move in three years, which is still rather in media use raise, so that will

be a story for next year. On the writing front, it was a year like no other. It was the year in which I chose to face my ongoing

burnout and writer's block head on and give myself permission to not write fiction for a full 12 months.

In many ways, that decision turned out to be the one that defined 2021 for me. It is a decision I have not regretted for a moment,

although there were plenty of moments when it scared me. In the end it was a

decision that turned out to be a tremendous gift from myself to myself.

And now, as I reflect back on the year and what it brought me, what I see beyond the difficulties are all the gifts.

Usually in my New Year podcast I talk about the lessons I learned from the past year. But this year I realized the one major lesson I learned

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