In my journals I’m always waking. This only seems repetitive. Everything’s new. I’m a new person in a new world, castaway on a strange shore. I must take my bearings.

This is my experience, not a trope. Waking we’re momentarily bewildered. Our bewilderment soon passes so we ignore it. Few like feeling lost. We want to be old hands, confident in our game. Only explorers look forward to dislocation – and released prisoners, I suppose.

I jot my coordinate points. My journal’s my logbook. We’ve drifted in the night, our vantage changed, our prospects, the weather – whether for better or worse it’s too soon to tell. We take inventory, count toes and fingers – and our lucky stars.

Today could be the day! For makers especially, possibility glows. Our product must be new or else it’s dead. One day Handel woke, yawned, and composed the Hallelujah chorus. Not bad, he sipped his cooling coffee – not half bad.

What a chance – to be alive! A struggle, yes, getting up, facing the unknown. We may cling to our pillow, cursing the clock. Being human is hard, unnecessarily taxing, it sometimes seems. Henry doesn’t fret where – or who – he is when his eyes open. He’s the same dog who went to sleep. He’ll enjoy today without judging his performance. He will not fall short – short of what?

I’m always falling short. Grumpy at dusk, I need a drink. I’ve never done enough. This was less true in my career years. If I’d lived through my day, checked off my appointments, wasn’t that enough? Making, I can always have made more, better. Handel’s chorus was fine in its way, but what about the next number? No maker worth his salt adjudges his work “good,” as God did on the seventh day. Better’s the best we can hope for.

Being human is a mixed blessing. Suspense makes existence exciting, a nail-biter if you’re paying attention. “Only bores are bored,” my mother used to singsong. We can, indeed must, put the past behind us and begin again – each dawn. Never say die!

Awareness is our great gift – and tireless curse. How can we be satisfied – or even calm? We’re haunted by the subjunctive – what might be or, more terribly, might have been. We let ourselves down or, if not, didn’t dream high enough.

The trick of being is doing our best – and cutting ourselves slack if we have. I ache at all I didn’t do, but enough – that way madness lies. I’ve got this glorious day ahead – see what I can make of that!

I pity those who moan in the morning, waking to a dire dawn. Count your blessings, you ninny, not your gripes. What you don’t possess is infinite by definition; embrace, rather, all you have. Have you ever seen such a sky? Have you looked? Have you really looked?

Gladness is not a put-up job – or sugarcoating – or refusal to see, but our moral responsibility. Why were we born if not to better the world for one another? It enrages me when politicians stir discontent. Is the world perfect? Of course not. But we’ve a chance to better it. How lucky is that!

Sometimes joy isn’t easy. We groan with Sisyphus; our ordeal feels hardly worth it. This happens to me as the sun sets and my strength ebbs. My mood can be grim.

I set to work repairing my outlook, suppressing complaints, diverting my attention, pouring another. “Hey, Henry, feel like a walk?” The sky’s radiant with stars – or clouds – no matter which. Soon sleep will come, then waking – to a world all new.