Welcome to 2020

Wow, it’s a whole new decade. I needed to just kind of sit with that for a little bit over the last few days, let me just tell you. It’s January third, 2020. It’s the fourth decade change I’ve seen in my life (I was born in 1986). I’ll turn 34 this year, which means I’m clearly in my mid-thirties and not my early thirties. Let me tell you, it’s a sobering prospect.

But that’s neither here nor there. What I really wanted to talk to you about was my word of the year.

Do you do a word of the year? Everyone should. It gives you a target to aim for. It gives you some clarity. Especially if you, like me, tend to put way too much on yourself. Having a word of the year puts things in perspective. What’s the most important thing to do today? Well, what’s my word of the year? Whatever goes toward that, that’s what I do.

In 2019, my word of the year was brave. I was required to be brave for a lot of things in my personal life. There have been some health issues going on, and the whole year’s been a bit of a mess. But I also decided I wanted to be brave about other things. I decided to be brave enough to talk about leaving the Mormon church and converting to Unitarianism. I talked about things going on in the world that were upsetting me. And I had to be brave enough to end my first trilogy and move on to something new. 

It also lead me to apply for a critic job at Horror HTML. By the way, I’m doing five reviews a month over there, if you’re a horror fan. 

Brave was a great word for 2019. But every year is a new chapter and requires new things of us. So for 2020, my word of the year is Foundation.

Here’s what that means to me. As I said, I’m creeping into my mid-thirties now, and I sure as hell don’t want to be in bad shape health-wise when I get older. I also have this bold, audacious dream of buying an RV and traveling around America selling my books and working as a freelance writer. And I want to do it by 2029. So, what I need to do this year is to build a foundation of good health and habits that will allow me to do that.

I need to build a foundation of good eating and exercise habits.

I need to build a foundation of good spending habits.

I need to build a foundation for a more serious writing career. 

I need to build a foundation of minimalism to fit my life into an RV.

I don’t know if I can get healthy in a year. I think I can. I don’t think I’ll be making quit my day job writing money in a year. And I’m sure I can’t go through a lifetime of physical and emotional clutter to leave a lot of things behind. Well, maybe I could leave all the physical things behind. But I’ve got to not collect more things after that. That’s the tricky part. 

So that’s the plan. Build a strong foundation that will lead me to where I want to be in ten years. It’s a little crazy and super scary. But a year of being brave brought me to a better place. Let’s see what a year of building a foundation for the rest of my life can take me.

What about you? What’s your word of the year and why? Let us know in the comments below.