It’s been a weird year.

I won a work-in-progress award on my middle grade golem manuscript. I flew to San Diego and gave an acceptance speech, which were both things I’d never done before (I also took my first red-eye flight, which I will try never to do again). I won a partial grant on the same manuscript, then spent much of the year revising it based on all the feedback. This slowed me down in terms of short stories, obviously, but I still got published in two magazines and an anthology.

I also collected a bunch of rejections, including on that same manuscript. Will it ever get published? Who knows? I said to a writer friend the other day, “Getting struck by lightning is not a business plan,” and I’m thinking of putting that on a T-shirt and selling it at writers’ conferences, which sounds like a more solid business plan than writing fiction.

But my writer friends are wiser than I am, and they say the real point of writing is for the joy of it. So I’m looking for joy. I’m putting down the cryptid middle grade manuscript I’m currently wrestling with and reconnecting with the dybbuk novel I’d been ignoring, which maybe had the wrong protagonist all along. I’m catching up on my reading (finally read The Hidden Palace and loved it; next up, The Golem of Brooklyn). I’m taking a deep breath in time for the holidays, literally meaning both holidays at once since Hanukkah starts on Christmas. And I’m holding out hope for the new year, for so many reasons.

It can feel like running in place sometimes, trying to accomplish a goal and not getting there, like no one even notices you trying. But people notice.

My town officials just passed an ordinance that effectively kills the Pride flag raising, which is deeply disappointing considering I planned that event last June. (They have their reasons. I don’t agree. They’ve promised we can do a separate, larger Pride event instead—we’ll see how this plays out.) I spoke at the council meeting where they were about to vote on that ordinance, telling them how this would be seen by the LGBT community, asking them to reconsider. They didn’t.

I was upset after that meeting, feeling like I’d failed. But another community member was at that meeting and heard me speak, and they emailed me afterward to say how much they appreciated it—how brave and confident I was.

I didn’t know anyone else was listening. I didn’t know I was making an impression on anyone.

So here’s my takeaway for the new year: If you keep doing what’s important to you, it will matter, in ways you might not even know about. Just keep showing up and doing the work.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.