It’s December 31st and everywhere you look bloggers are busy posting the great roundup of 2015 showcasing all their top posts of the year. I have no intention of doing that. No, 2015, much like it’s predecessor 2014, has been somewhat of a bust for me. I re-injured an old spinal injury and doctor visits, physical therapy, testing, testing, and more testing have eaten up the past six months. My little home filled with seven cats and two dogs and two humans, once a refuge, became an adorable prison that I wasn’t able to leave. And even though things are somewhat better, I still have a long road of recovery ahead of me.

In retrospect, 2015 wasn’t all bad. While my injury meant that I couldn’t work as much as I wanted to, it didn’t stop some progress. Sanctuary Spotlight was re-launched, I wrote dozens of new vegan guides, created a vegan bookstore filled with hundreds of vegan titles, and revamped Vegan Flicks, the movie library, to include a Vegan Netflix Guide. I wrote about veganism and the environment and all about vegan dairy. I started delivering YDV posts directly to email boxes for those who wished to subscribe. There is still a lot I want to bring to this site, but I’m glad that some of my 2015 goals were met.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one working on behalf of Your Daily Vegan in 2015. Both Daria Zeoli and Jenny Canham both were a part of the team, creating thoughtful editorials about the vegan lifestyle and sharing sanctuary stories from around the globe. Both animals and humans benefited from the stories they shared and I’m proud of the work they produced. It inspired me and I hope that it inspired you, too.

It’s not uncommon to sit and reflect on the past year when it draws to a close and ask yourself, “where are you headed in 2016?” While I don’t want to bore you with my regrets (see: above injury) about this year, I do want to share some news with you as I look towards 2016. I started this website in 2009, back before vegan cheese could melt. I’ve watched the landscape of vegan blogging change quite a bit over this time. Before there were just a handful of vegan bloggers, each trying to make their voice heard over the din of “vay-gun, what’s a vay-gun?” These days you can hardly turn around without bumping into a vegan blogger- whoops, I mean vegan influencer (that’s what bloggers are called now, influencers). Hell, even mainstream non-vegan sites are now showcasing tasty vegan recipes or the latest cute photo of a rescue goat.

I knew from the very beginning of my blogging career that I wanted to share this space with other vegan voices. After all, no one on the playground wants to play by themselves and I thought that the more vegan voices joined together, the louder our message would be. So, after two years of showcasing guest contributors, I hired on a few full-time writers. And for the past five years I’ve been rotating a multitude of full-time writers in and out of the site with Daria being the longest full-time editorialist that I ever had.

But the more I thought about my own personal goals, the more I realized that managing multiple writers isn’t right for me. So with a heavy heart, I parted ways with Daria and Jenny. Both Daria and Jenny both have their own personal websites which I highly encourage you to visit and support. You can connect with them via their social media accounts as well. I also feel the need to mention that this has nothing to do with the excellent work that Daria and Jenny produced, rather it’s a reflection of where I want to go personally.

For the first time in five years, the content on this site will be written exclusively by me and I’m very much looking forward to getting back to my blogging roots so-to-speak. There are going to be changes to the site as I move forward but that’s a different story for a different day. Today it’s about new beginnings. When the calendar turns to January 1st, I’ll not only be entering 2016, I’ll be entering my 11th year living as a vegan. I’m looking forward, not back, and I hope you join me in saving some animals in this new year.