Dear Reader,

2020. What a year.

And it’s only July.

I’m expecting another Biblical event happening any day now. I mean, it IS hurricane season and what’s to stop this crazy year from unleashing something we didn’t expect?

Like the Bubonic Plague.

Yes, this year has been a dumpster fire for just about everyone, me included. However, that doesn’t mean the year is cancelled.

I mean, if we had time travel, we could just skip into 2021 but that is not an option.

Now that we’re a bit past the midpoint of this year, I thought I’d check back and look how at how my word of the year was coming along.

Build was chosen because I wanted to create some things for future years. I wanted to learn and unlearn things than no longer served me. Boy, ain’t that happening this year!

For build, I wanted to concentrate on four areas: health, creative, financial, and family/community.

At first, I was afraid that I hadn’t done much with my word. Frankly, I was more focused on survival. But when I went back to reflect, I was pleasantly surprised.

For health, I have been working on not only being physically stronger but mentally stronger, focusing on finding as much time as I could for myself while giving myself grace for not accomplishing things. If I couldn’t complete something on my to do list, for example, I gave myself permission to rest. I repeated a mantra, “it will get done” and somehow, magically, it did.

I also worked out. Yes, I’m still working out. I temporarily stopped during what I call AllergyGate 2020. (Did you know you can get several allergies at the same time during a pandemic?) Now, I’m easing back into my workout routine. This pleases me to no end.

I am learning how much my body loves to move. This is my favorite yoga mat. Yes, I do have a favorite. Yoga gives me comfort. I’m also enjoying tabata workouts as well.

For my creative goal, I thought that I needed to complete projects or add more to fulfill my word of the year. Yes and no. While I’m working on my memoir, of course, it’s important to send out work into the world and share. I not only want to build myself up as a creative but give back to other creatives. Hence the workshop this week. I have others that I am planning as well, including a short practice in September.

Build also means that my creative projects have gotten deeper and more purposeful. For example, the second season of Dear Reader is something I’m already proud of. The writers and guests on the show are brilliant and I think there will be opportunity to learn from them.

Part of building was also building a space for my work. That meant recovering my desk from storage, cleaning out a room in my house and putting together my office.

Among all these areas, financial has been the most surprising. I thought build meant making more money. But what has been interesting has been learning the management of money — budgeting, investments, etc. Learning all this has been so interesting, but what has been even more interesting is to learn how money can function.

There’s so much more to share but I don’t want this to become a list. What I do want this to be is inspiration to look at your word of the year and see how your life has changed with that word, or maybe not. Maybe it’s a time of reflection to see how, for the rest of this year, you can keep the promise to yourself for the next couple of months.

Keep building,

-Icess