Go ahead and groan all you want – you knew that we were eventually going to have to do this sooner or later.  I mean, we’re almost all the way through January in its entirety, and I would be remiss as your life counselor and personal purveyor of comedic wordplay if I didn’t at least take a few moments to touch on New Years resolutions sometime this month while the year is still relatively young and the bad habits are still somewhat inebriated from the festivities and thus all the more easier to break.

Now the truth is, I’ll admit, that I don’t like resolutions any more than you do, to the extent that I was originally going to rub it in that I gave you almost an entire month before even bringing them up, when the truth is that hell, I haven’t even written my own resolutions yet! Talk about a horrible way to lead by example, I know, but blame it on the frigid weather, getting sick, a lousy economy, political quarreling, and a bevy of above average movies currently playing on HBO, not to mention trying to recover mentally, physically, and emotionally from the holidays and, well, now we’re just making excuses for ourselves, aren’t we?

Or are we???

Here’s some food for thought – frankly, I think that January is a lousy time to try and make any worthwhile changes to your life because there are just too many distractions – you’re just coming off of an extended holiday break, meaning that society is actually starting to expect you to actually do things once again; the holidays may be over, but the cookies and candies and other random, miscellaneous treats still linger around the house to serve as small, dietary cheats for weeks to come; and even just the mood in general is all apprehensive and judgmental, as if the entire world is just watching and waiting for you to fall off the wagon, either proverbially or literally, depending on your specific New Years resolution(s) of choice…

That’s why I’m personally not all that concerned about not yet having my own resolutions written – if anything, I would say that now is, in fact, the perfect time to finally sit down and scribble a few noteworthy self improvements down to try to strive for over the next eleven months.  At the same time that most people are being declared absolute failures with regards to the goals that they set only moments before clinking martini glasses or heading out to spend roughly seventeen hours corralled in Times Square for the ceremonial dropping of the shiny ball, we technically haven’t failed at anything yet … unless you count the act of actually choosing one’s resolutions in the first place, which we’re not going to!  While all of our friends and family are throwing in the towel and dropping out of the race, thus effectively returning to the previous lives that they wanted so desperately to get away from – that’s when the rest of us will finally stand up and give this challenge a healthy go!

And we’re going to get through this thing together, now that we’ve actually taken the initiative to start, that is, because if there’s one thing that humor columnists like me are good at, it’s getting things done … eventually. We may not always be the first to cross the finish line.  Hell, sometimes we don’t even show up the same day that the race is scheduled to begin!  But when push comes to shove and when most others have either failed miserably, dropped out, or simply lost interest altogether – that’s our time to shine, my friends!

So with those inspiring words energizing your desire to be the better person that you were kinda thinking about, but not really enough to actually make any plans for improvement a month ago, I want you to now put that pen to paper, write out exactly what you want to do in this new and exciting year that we’ve dubbed 2010, and then get your butt out there and start working on it!  Don’t worry – I’ll be right here with you every step of the way … well, actually I need to go and grab something from the other room first, and then I was actually thinking about getting a bite to eat and maybe running some errands, but you just go on ahead and get started and I’ll catch up just as soon as I can…

This is going to be a great year for resolutions – I can feel it already!