2010! Where did the first decade of the millennium go? It flew by like feathers on an eagle. Whoosh. And now here it is, time for New Year’s resolutions all over again. Over the years I have made all the old standbys including lose weight, exercise more and get organized. I have made some adventurous ones – run a marathon, visit Africa and learn how to eat fire. I have made green ones – reduce garbage outflow to one bag a year, plant 100 trees and raise all my own food. I have made social ones – grow vegetables for the food bank, volunteer for a worthy cause and adopt a roadside. I’ve kept a few resolutions and failed to keep a lot. Some years I shun the whole lemming mentality and refuse to make any resolutions at all – I have discovered they’re easier to keep that way. This year I asked several people to give me 10 resolutions they would not only love to keep but would actually enjoy keeping. Here are just a couple dozen of the replies I received ranging from the predictable to the just a little strange.

1. Sleep in until noon at least once a week
2. Make a snowman
3. Eat dessert first
4. Dance
5. Watch a favourite movie three times in a row
6. Buy crayons and a colouring book and colour outside the lines
7. Paint one room in your house banana yellow.
8. Plant two apple trees a hammock width apart.
9. Take an entire month’s vacation, tell everyone you’re going away then just stay home and really relax!
10. Toss the weigh scale
11. Sing
12. Tame a raven and name him Maven
13. Ditch all technology except electricity and running water
14. Laugh
15. Write a book
16. Play pond hockey until you can’t feel your toes
17. Spend an entire afternoon playing computer solitaire
18. Eat or drink at least one thing per day with chocolate in it
19. Whenever the temperature falls below minus 25 degrees spend the day in bed with a good book. And at least one thing with chocolate in it.
20. Whenever the temperature climbs above 25 degrees spend the day in the shade with a good book. And at least one thing with chocolate in it.

What impressed me the most about all the lists I received was that not a single person put down swimming with dolphins or skydiving. Skydiving has to be the craziest list item there is. Every time I see it on a “100 Things to Do before You Die” list I can’t help hoping the writer at least has enough sense to do the other 99 things first. I mentioned this to one of the resolution senders who nodded sagely and said, “Obviously you have a deep seated fear of heights.” I told her that wasn’t the problem at all. It’s not heights I’m afraid of, it’s gravity. There are some laws you just shouldn’t mess with and gravity is one of them. Swimming with dolphins would be pretty cool though – even if it is listed way too often – but first I would have to learn how to swim and learning to swim falls under self improvement which comes dangerously close to being a traditional resolution and, well, that just won’t do at all.