Wake up you sleepy head
Put on some clothes, shake up your bed
Put another log on the fire for me
I’ve made some breakfast and coffee
Look out my window and what do I see
A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me
All the nightmares came today
And it looks as though they’re here to stay
-bowie

Wow, can we be any more inundated by the new election year?  It seems like it’s been going on forever and it’s going to go on a long time.  Certainly one major theme this year is a decision on vision.  Do we look back, stay the same or move forward?  You’re not going to catch me digging to deeply into the craziness of it all, but I am enjoying some of the discussions.  

Each day we get up and face a new dawn.  Certainly we bring elements of yesterday with us, but the dawn does bring with it the opportunity to put yesterday in its place and start again. We can re-envision and in some ways re-define our lives.  This is of course the idea we put behind each new year’s resolution.  Still, most people who succeed in their dreams realize that goals can really never reach much further than dawn to dusk.  The following day we must reacquaint ourselves with our goals and again just make our determination last until we head to bed the following evening. If we can do this each and every day, soon days turn to weeks, turn to months, turn to years.  For most of us it’s the only way.  One tiny morsel at a time.

“Day by day”  is more than just a cliché of course.  If we want to lose weight, quit smoking, paddle round an island or even change the whole script of how our life is going,  we have to address it each day.  Soon after we awake, we have a little conference with ourselves.  We ask, “What are we going to do today to work toward our goal”.   Once we have those things defined we can do them and move on.  Remember we only have to do them today.  We’ll talk about tomorrow, well, tomorrow.  With this in mind even our failures and slips are contained.  The can be locked in the box of the day. Tomorrow we wake up right back on track.   Then as they say, “Time flies” and suddenly you are achieving your goal.

Chicago Police officer Nial Funchion set a goal for 2008 worth noting.  He plans to swim around Lake Michigan (about 1,000 miles) beginning on June first.  He is looking for kayakers & clubs to help guide and and keep an eye on him along the way.  Of course if anyone has a spare bed along the way he’d appreciate that too.  You can reach him through his website, Connect To The Journey.   On his blog Nial explains;

“Lately I feel that steamroller moving at a high rate of speed right on my heels, as I am sure others do also … It is a battle to stay ahead, to dream, to go against the current, to ENVISION, to see your life as something to investigate and get into to see where it fits.

It is a battle. For me I see it just like that. And for every moment I act disciplined, I feel I earned the right to continue. . .  That is how I feel; that is what grabbed me. It is a beautiful battle, life.” – Nial Funchion

So with the sun coming up and the big goal hung like a poster on the wall, I can look in the mirror and ask, “what can I do . .  just to make it through today.