So, 2015 was certainly a year. A full, full year. I saw many other people on Twitter and their own blogs write about their accomplishments, their projects, their milestones and I thought it only fitting that I talk about mine. In a vague, possibly close to chronological order, this is what my 2015 was like:

• I continued to write for The Mary Sue, with many pieces I really liked but none so emotional as my look back at Leslie Knope after the Parks and Rec finale.
• I also interviewed Young Justice creator Greg Weisman for TMS, which was thrilling and terrifying considering how big that series was for me in getting me into reading comics.
• I started writing for Panels as a regular contributor early in the year, with over 25 pieces to my name at the time of writing this (not including the pieces I did as a guest writer and the pieces I contributed to but didn’t have a byline for).
• I contributed to Quirk Books’ blog with two pieces over the course of the year and another one has been submitted but not published yet.
• We did a complete design overhaul of the Just Plain Something website and I finally put KatieSchenkel.com online as a hub for my professional work. I can’t thank my partner Mike for all the work he did on making the two websites what they are.
• Speaking of Mike, the two of us did 31 Driving Home the Movie episodes this year, which is easily a record for us. Seriously, 31 episodes. And that doesn’t include our Agent Carter reviews nor our Let’s Plays. We also managed to get out 12 Just Plain Something Podcast episodes (the December episode will be up later today) and moved over our videos to YouTube after the slow death of Blip.
• I was on the rather infamous but incredibly fun all-women Men in Comics panel at Indy Pop Con.
• I was included in the Feminist Deck kickstarter and did some copywriting work for the project.
• I was a guest on Into It with Elle Collins to talk about the Justice League cartoon and the Gosh, Cartoons podcast to talk about Steven Universe.
• I met the Batgirl writers, got to talked to them for way longer than I anticipated and didn’t make an ass of myself.
• I wrote an article for Playboy‘s website and while I have no idea if I’ll submit another piece to them again, getting in that publication meant standing among some of the best writers of the last century, even if for a little while. So that happened.
• I reviewed season two of Bojack Horseman for IGN.
• I joined the contributing writers at Comics Alliance, which also blows my mind if I think about it too much. Along with other pieces, I got to write about how Jessica Jones and Supergirl have more in common than most people realize, which is still one of my favorite pieces of the year.
• I got chosen by the incredibly talented artist Chad Sell to be one of his contributing writers on the Cardboard Kingdom comic project. The comic is still being worked on but is coming along and I’m so immensely happy with it. Can’t wait to share more.
• And in easily the craziest thing I did this year, I got hired on as the Lead Copywriter at Rewards Network and moved to Chicago over the course of a few weeks in late September and early October. It is still the most baffling change of the year for me because it happened extremely fast but I made it all work.

To say my 2015 was busy is to undersell it. Which is to say, I have a tendency to undersell how busy I am, how much I get done, just how much I’ve taken on.

Something I haven’t talked about publicly is that 2015 was also the year that I was rejected. A lot. I was unsatisfied (and my anxiety at high alert) in my previous full-time job and applied for many different new positions at other places, only to be turned down again and again. I pitched to websites that never bothered to get back to me. There was one employer I applied for multiple times in the last year, and got interviewed at multiple times, who never hired me. I cried a lot over that one. I called myself a failure more than once this year.

On top of that, we had not one but two car accidents, the second of which was our fault and both of which meant we had to buy another car. Leg injuries, car insurance dropping us, the anxiety of only having one car when our other one crapped out on us. And then there was burning some specific bridges with people, dealing with drama, worrying about my exposure online and the constant possibility of being targeted by harassers. The underlying anxiety of being a woman online with an opinion. You’ll notice anxiety played a big role in my year.

2015 made me feel like a failure more times than I care to admit. More than once, I had to say no to a project or drop an idea because I couldn’t make the time or didn’t have the energy to do it and I felt like I wasn’t doing enough. But then I look at what I’ve actual done, finished, put out into the world and I know that once again I’m too hard on myself (this is a theme, if you can’t tell). Above is all the work I did in 2015, and it’s about time I recognize that I did good.