New Year’s Day 2008

Okay, you’ve got a brand new year. What are you going to do with it? Will this be the year that you make your dream of fulltiming come true? Or maybe the year that you quit smoking or finally lose that weight?

I used to think of January 1^st the way I did of the first day of the school year when I was a kid. Excitement over the possibilities that lay ahead, maybe a bit of apprehension over the unknown, and an eagerness to get going.

But over time I began to think of the new year as a brand new journal, filled with blank pages. Every day I have the power to write my life’s story on those pages. At the end of this new year, what story will your journal tell?

Will there be days of joy, and days of sadness? Probably, because that is what life is, a succession of good days and bad days. I hope at the end of the year, the happy days in your journal far outweigh the sad ones.

But more than anything else, I hope there are days of adventure as you try something new, days of wonderment as you stand on the ocean’s shore or at the rim of the Grand Canyon, and days of contentment as you relax under your awning with someone you love.

What I hope you don’t put down in your journal are days of nothing new. Every day you should strive to learn something new, to make a new friend, to try something you never have before. To me, there is nothing worse than being stuck in a rut, doing the same thing every day, going to the same places over and over again.

I have met many RVers who would love to spend the winter in Arizona or south Texas but can’t because “we always go to Florida.” I’ve met just as many who will never know the wonders of the Smoky Mountains or the thrill of walking in history’s footsteps in New England, because “we never go east of the Mississippi River.”

Why limit yourself this way? There is an entire country out here to explore! There are new friends to meet, now sights to see, new foods to taste, and new sunsets to watch. Don’t become a slave to habit or to the comfortable and familiar. As we get older, our waistlines are not the only things we can expand. Expand your mind and expand your horizons. As singer Jimmy Buffett says “Make deposits to your own bank of experiences.”

365 days from today, when you look back over the journal of your year, I hope it’s a love story, a travelogue, and an adventure story. I hope it’s not a diary filled with one day after another of “more of the same.”

Remember, the only difference between a rut and a grave is the length and the depth.

Thought For The Day – When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don’t let her brush your hair