❄ My 2023 ❄

I have a friend who keeps telling me, "Irina, you share your amazing achievements on social media all the time. Aren't you afraid people will hate you?"

I am not afraid, but I do realize some people will indeed hate me for that. I also know there are those who are inspired by that. If you are too, keep reading. If I can do this, so too can you - there is nothing fundamentally unique or out of reach about any of the amazing things I do.

The highlights of my 2023:

❄ I won yet another grant - ELEX - and attended TESOL 2023 in Portland, Oregon. I hadn't been to the US since my 💎 year, so I missed it and just had to go again. 🇺🇲

❄ Inspired by the experience, I submitted three proposals to speak at TESOL 2024 - and one got accepted! I'll present at the biggest conference in the ELT industry in March in Florida! 🇺🇲

❄ Inspired by the success, I submitted another proposal and won yet another grant - this time for others. I got a Creative Writing course with an American teacher for 20 wonderful people in my community!

❄ Inspired by Alisher Soliev, I got my second IELTS 9 and third 8.5 for writing. 💜

❄ Started writing IELTS answers weekly and continued teaching IELTS writing relying almost exclusively on my own model answers. And Anna Skopina draws beautiful visuals for the tasks. So our writing courses have a uniquely distinct style - in terms of both the texts and the images.

❄ Spoke at three major ELT conferences in Russia: Trendy St Pete in St Pete, Trendy Evolution in Moscow, and YarConf23 in Yaroslavl. Continued to spread my passion for writing.

❄ Met Jordan Peterson the second time!

❄ Took my own Creative Writing project to the next level - launched a book discussion club based on our stories "Small Stories Big Ideas." Superbly hosted by the wonderful Vera Averyanova. To be repeated in 2024 - stay tuned.

❄ ... and then Evgenia Karabatova took my project to the absolutely unimaginable (until now) but highly inspiring level - she wrote a real novel, 30,000 words long!!! The novel will be featured in the new season of "Small Stories Big Ideas."

❄ ... and Veronika Shirobokova made a huge contribution to my creative writing community too by running an awesome poetry writing mini-course.

❄ Increased my running distances significantly: I now run three times a week, a total of 25 km, on average. 🏃‍♀

Of course, I couldn't have done so much without the people mentioned and many others helping behind the scenes. My unending gratitude to every single person who contributed to the activities above. 💜

And also huge thanks to those of you who, rather than hating me, are inspired by me. 💜