Hi, I'm Lovar Burton, and this is Lovar Burton Reads.

In every episode, I handpick a different piece of short fiction, and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them, and I hope you will too.

Well, y'all, thank you for joining me for another season of Lovar Burton Reads.

I started out planning the season of stories as an antidote to the times, and as I started reading and reviewing,

I just had to engage with this moment, and a different type of stories appealed to me.

And then I had this voice thing, right, that happened when I was doing the live readings on Twitter at the beginning of this COVID thing.

In doing the live readings, I exhausted my voice, and it developed this sort of real raspiness to it, and I got very scared,

and as soon as it was safe to, I went to a doctor, a specialist, an ENT guy, who gave me a COVID test,

and when it came back clear, he scoped my throat because my fear was that I had done some damage to my vocal cords.

And as it turns out, I hadn't, but my voice was fatigued, and he recommended to me a vocal coach, whom I've been working with for the last several weeks.

And so I believe everything happens for a reason, you know?

I mean, everything happens for a reason. And even though I'm not quite sure why I'm having this challenge with my voice,

what I do know is that I'm being required to unlearn years and years of what I have come to find out are bad habits.

I am actually learning to relax and breathe more when I'm speaking and to allow the sound to come out rather than trying to force the sound,

which has been my way for over 43 years of my career.

So it's been weird, and as I said, it's been scary.

But it's also kind of exciting because I think I'm beginning to feel that somewhere, at some point along this journey,

I'm going to come into a new fullness of my voice.

So all that to say, we have so many intentions that sometimes we just get way laid and we have to just go with what it is.

So this season seven, this is my season of surrender.

I am surrendering to the what is working with that, which I can change and understanding that there are so many things that are outside of my control.

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