@SarahTheColdplayer I haven't even looked at my profile since I made my account.
No, it wasn't self publishing. The first time I got published, it was a national contest. Thousands of entries are submitted, and about fifty were published in my issue. My poem was one of five nominees for "Best of Issue", and it won. It appeared on the first page of the next issue.
The last thing I had published was a short story, titled "Red Oak Drive". It was published in "From the Grove". There weren't as many submissions to them, because they're an Elk Grove thing, not nation wide.