As we move into a new year this week, I look back at my blog which kicked off 2024 and here’s what I read: “My commitment this year is to show up and play full out. Every week.”  I didn’t quite do that every week, but certainly more weeks than I did the previous years. I’ve made progress. That encourages me to set the same goal for 2025 – to show up and play full out every week! It’s a good, worthy goal. It reminds me of a quote from Jack Boland: “Live full. Die empty.”  Okay then!

Playing full out last year helped me to reach some big goals that fuel my dreams.

• I now have a professional screenplay to support my dream of turning Keep Walking, Your Heart Will Catch Up into a movie. (Thank you, producer Killian Beldy and screen writer Emily Schmitt.) That’s the first step; many more to go.
• I was a keynote speaker at the California Library Literacy Services conference. I welcome an opportunity to speak to more groups in 2025.
• I’m proud to have researched and written A Guide to Literacy Services in California Public Libraries: A Practice of Community
• There are many smaller goals that didn’t take as much of my time but are just as important, like making friends in our new community, remodeling the kitchen and the bathroom, and keeping a bougainvillea tree alive in this Pacific Northwest winter!

I know there are many more reasons to be grateful, big and small, but I don’t recall them at the moment. So along with playing full out, I commit to keeping better track of all that I am thankful for in 2025 – a gratitude journal.

What are you grateful for in 2024? What’s on your vision board, your goal list for 2025? I’d love to know so that I can be thankful with you, and then I can cheer you on next year!