Here it is: my one and only New Year's resolution for 2017

A panel from Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson

Tomorrow being New Year's Day, it's time for our annual masochistic obsession with creating new and improved versions of our old and generally adequate selves.

You know the drill. Flush with self-confidence and the best of intentions, we pledge to improve ourselves in countless impractical ways: loose 50 pounds; run several marathons; become kind and compassionate and patient and saintly; learn three foreign languages; read all of the classics that escaped our attention in college; take an adult-ed course in nuclear-reactor repair; become a lawyer; and then turn around and go to medical school.

I'm taking a different route. By adopting one eminently sensible resolution and one resolution only, I figure there's a better chance I'll actually see it through than if I weigh myself down with a litany of overly optimistic promises that will look hopelessly unachievable and just plain silly by mid January.

So here it is.

I resolve that,  during the winter months of 2017, I will successfully walk our two dogs, Aquinnah and Martha, along the snowy, ice-covered streets of our neighborhood here in central Maine without falling on my ass and breaking some regularly used body part, such as an arm, a leg or a neck. In my experience, such components of the apparatus invariably work better in factory-issued condition.

Of course, considering the state of our sidewalks hereabouts after a snowfall, it might be easier to both pass the bar and get a medical degree over the next 12 months than to stay upright while out with the pups from January through March, and November through December. Especially when Martha decides to bolt after seeing a ghost, or Aquinnah tries, yet again, to take a bite out of his nemesis, Mr. Crow (and all of his numerous relations). But I'll take my chances in 2017. Even if it proves to be the year of walking dangerously.