When summer rolls around, I can't help but recall going to camp.

When I was a kid, I went to Camp Merrie Woode in Plainwell, MI, for two weeks each summer. I went for eight years and had the time of my life.

The picture above is from the year I rode the Shore to Shore Trail on horseback in Northern Michigan.

We spent our days riding and then pitched our two-man pup tents. We cooked breakfast and dinner over an open fire, bathed in streams, and learned how to live on the trail.

Because the horses could get a little spooked at night, we took turns keeping watch. This meant getting up at 1,2,3, or 4 in the morning with your tent mate, and keeping check on the horses and the campsite to make sure everything was okay.

In the USA, we are celebrating Thanksgiving this Thursday. It's a big family day, a big dinner day, a big football day, and a holiday to give thanks for your blessings.

How lucky we are to have a holiday to give thanks.

Have you ever noticed how much better you feel when you're thankful? Have you ever felt upset and then looked at some of the things you’re grateful for and snapped out of some funk?

We are all hit with massive amounts of information daily. There are endless streams of opinion in the world, and sometimes you discover something good, and sometimes you run across things that hardly make sense.

But don’t you love it when you run into a brick of 24-karat gold wisdom? Don’t you love it when you find a piece of knowledge that you know is the truth? The kind of knowledge that you don't have to waste your time trying to convince yourself is true? 

I remember the first summer we lived in Nashville. I walked 50 feet from my car into a Food Lion grocery store and when I arrived, I felt like a cowboy who’d just rode through Death Valley and was ready to fall off his horse.

I felt like a drunk stumbling out of a bar. It was hard to compose myself. I had unknowingly fought the sun, and the sun won. It was a 20-second fight and I began to wither a third of the way in.

That was when I learned the meaning of the word, Faint, F A I N T.

Scarlett O’Hara…

To me, the best art comes when you create without a self-conscious filter and a willingness to go for it. Being a self-loathing critic of your own art while you're in the middle of making something can stop you in your tracks. People can even become so afraid of producing bad art or doing something wrong that they hold themselves back from doing their art at all.

What is a new year, but the chance for a fresh start? What is a new year, if not a time to realign, redo, and recommit to the goals, purposes, dreams, and plans that are important to us?

A new year. A new beginning. A new way of looking at things. A new goal. A new reason. A new day.

A new year is not the last year or the year before. It's a new year. What will you do with it?