2016 in Pictures- The High's within the Low's!

I mentioned in my last post what an adventure 2016 was for me. Among the toxins that were in my life ,on the creative side I’ve actually surprised myself at how much I achieved. This is a positive step towards starting the new year. It is easy to feel disheartened about the resolutions that never came into play the previous year, to the point that we do not bother making any the following year. I’ve learnt we should always look for the positives and not dwell on the negatives.

It is actually the better level of success with my writing that made me realise that this is the path I would like to follow professionally and that the end of certain chapters in my life were a sign that writing is my new chapter.

Here is a list (where possible with pictures) of some of my 2016 writing highlights:

1. De Monfort university bookshop stocked one of my books, the anthology I wrote for young adults.
   

   
2. I was invited to Moat Community College to conduct a writing workshop as part of World Book Day.
   
3. I can now add Playwright to my writing credentials as I had two plays performed, following from the course I did on Script Writing at The Y Theatre. One play was performed at a playwrights open mike event and with the other one I was the actress,writer and director for Emergency Showcase at the Y Theatre Leicester.
4. I continued to perform at various poetry/open mike events around and out of Leicester.
   
5. I took my performances to another level by taking up music again and sang a semi classical Assamese song called Borgeet for Sankar Jayanti celebrations. I generally took music more seriously again by refreshing my previous Indian Classical training and learning to play Guitar and Ukulele.
6. I was a guest author at the very prestigious Everybody's Reading Festival.
   
7. My sixth book Assam Adventures was published, making sales internationally.
8. 
   I was invited on the radio again to take part in a debate about child/spousal maintenance on the back of my previous book The Divorce Toolbox.

Wow when I look at this it really makes me feel empowered, 2016 was a difficult year at times but this shows the toxic people and situations could not bring me down. This is just based on reviewing the creative side, if I look at 2016 overall there were positives in other areas too.
Writers go through rejection all the time, it is inevitable but earlier in the year a very toxic person actually prevented me from even applying for a writing job. I was disheartened at the time ,but look at the above writing successes I had instead, which far outweigh that one. Later on it actually turned out I may have been too over qualified for that job. My mum always told me “you can’t block anyone's progress”. Going back to my idol Madonna again this type of resistance made me stronger and I achieved a better level of success in other more meaningful writing ventures. I’m also very proud to say even though I’ve had to work and fight hard at times,everything I’ve ever achieved has been through my own hard week. I’ve never had any special favours or had to do anything underhand such as pay someone or sleep with someone to achieve my goals. I would rather struggle and achieve with dignity and a clear conscience, rather than have special favours as these are short lived.

If anyone is reading this dreading the year to come because the last one may not have been that great, I would urge you to undertake this exercise of just writing down positive things that happened no matter how big or small they are. Most importantly if anyone tries to block your progress use that as fuel to do even better, you can't be blocked forever!