New Years

No, I am not drinking champagne and "watching the ball drop" a week into December. Only a few of my holidays have been off-schedule.  And I am sure that, come New Year's Eve, I will be sorry that I jumped the gun on this blog post title. Oh, well, here goes.

Last night, I attended the holiday party for the Children's Media Association, an organization I joined almost two years ago (when its name was still Women in Children's Media) as part of my path toward creating content geared toward kids. I can't quite say I've succeeded on that path, given that most of the post-soap work I've done is reality shows, but that's the subject for another post.

What matters about the CMA Holiday party is that, while I walked in seeing a crowd of unfamiliar faces, much as I did at the same party last year, this year, I left several hours later having talked at length with a whole bunch of people I knew, as well as a fair number I met there, which is way more than how I left a year ago.

A lot has happened in a year.  I have gone from virtual outsider to a member of a new team.  I have gone from asking all the questions to actually knowing some of the answers and being able to field questions from others.  I may not "work the room" like a professional, but I am comfortable sharing the room with all these new professionals in my life, people who inspire me to look at things from a whole lot of directions I never even thought about.

So here's to holiday parties, and new years, new teams and new directions.  Funny how a group dedicated to content for kids actually helped ME grow up, understand my world, and take the first steps toward my next milestone.