With a new year comes new beginnings. And with new beginnings come old, repressed feelings, and with old, repressed feelings come bitterness and regret, and with bitterness and regret come the unbridled consumption of hard liquor and eventual homelessness.

But that’s not my point today.

Today, my point is to ask you about your New Year’s resolution.  

Notice I said your resolution, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to bother making one for what could potentially be civilization’s final year of existence.

If you’ve screwed up your resolution or haven’t made one yet, don’t worry — there is still time to delete or untag yourself from those Facebook photos. But also, there is still time to make a belated resolution for bettering yourself in 2012.

Because even if the Mayans are right and we’re all going to die in twelve months, being wiped off the face of our decaying planet as the great person you’ve always sought to become has never meant more.

So try jotting down some ideas that come to you.

Keep in mind your resolution should be a positive and realistic goal, meaning resolutions such as “become a serial arsonist,” “reduce the national debt” or “have sex with Scarlett Johansson and/or Ryan Reynolds” are decidedly out.

Exercising at least twice a week to lose that extra ten pounds, asking out that cute guy or girl from your science lab class, or dying in heroic fashion and having a public elementary school named after you—these are all perfectly reasonable goals.  

Maybe you don’t believe in resolutions, and that’s perfectly okay. We are all very flawed individuals. But self-improvement can happen when you really put your mind and body to the task.

In fact, just to show you how much good a resolution can do someone, let’s interview one of my readers right now to see how things are going:

Interactive Reader Question: How is your New Year’s resolution working out so far?

A: I don’t want to talk about it.

Q: Okay, I’m sorry. Did you have a bad New Year’s or something? What did you do?

A: I can’t really remember anything after the fifth martini.

Q: Sounds like a good time then.

A: I woke up handcuffed to a goat.

Q: Sounds like a really good time then. Was the goat friendly?

A: It ate my t-shirt right off my back and then threw up on me.

Q: Wow. Well, despite your unfortunate start to the year, you should have a chance to festively redeem yourself with the Chinese New Year on Jan. 23. This year is the “Year of the Dragon” ya know!

A: Dragons aren’t real.

Q: Sure they are. Sean Connery even played one in a movie once. It was called “Dragon Haggis” or something. You can train a dragon or fight one or do anything else you can think of with one.

A: Can I chase the dragon?

Q: Not on school property. By the way, I’m calling the police now. 

So there you have it.

Just another example of why you should make and stick to your New Year’s resolution. After all, this may be the last time you’ll get to make one.  

Also, if you are still a virgin, you should probably try and change that pretty soon. If the Mayans are correct, the volcanoes are going to be very hungry.