In the past 12 months, I’ve written for close to a dozen magazines and Websites, reconnected with former colleagues I hadn’t talked to in years, discovered LinkedIn and Facebook, started this blog, joined a writer’s group, went to New York to visit editors, sold a blog post to a writer’s anthology, and met up with a handful of fellow freelancers in their travels here to Portland. And those are just the highlights.

I had taken off the better part of seven years to help raise my family, so the thought of re-establishing my professional career was more than a little daunting.

During my time away, thought, I never completely stopped writing. I wrote and produced auction catalogs for my kids’ school fundraisers. I wrote weekly newsletters for schools, sports teams and other groups. I also taught a graduate-level journalism class for a semester, served as communications committee chair for a non-profit group, helped family and friends with writing and editing projects, and even wrote a few obituaries.

None of it was as intellectually challenging as the paid work I was used to. But it kept the old brain cells from atrophying completely. And I bring it up as a way of pointing out that, if you need to take time off for family or other reasons, there are ways to do it and at least keep the pilot lit on your writing.

Now that I’m back, it feels like I never left. Bad economy or not, here’s the the next 12 months.