These resolutions are actually achievable. By that I mean that I have aimed low this year. This time, it just might work.

1.) I will learn from the film Mamma Mia!

By this I mean I will never again go to a movie like Mamma Mia!, or any movie universally said to be bad. For instance, I will avoid Valkyrie, which I would even if it were universally said to be good, and it isn't.

From left, Christine Baranski, Meryl Streep and Julie Walters break into song (again) in the musical Mamma Mia! (Universal Pictures)

Mamma Mia! had a bad effect on me. I grew suspicious of anyone who enjoyed it. What frightened me most about the film was its message about old age, that people get manic and frantic and desperate for one last bit of sex.

I don't see the problem here. Can't they just hire someone? Instead of mugging for the camera and kicking up their leathery heels?

In stage musicals, singers always fling their arms about and bellow. But this was a movie set on an actual island. So they ran. They sang as they galloped over hills and dales, bridges and balconies. The acting was glazed ham with Julie Walters in particular making a fool of herself and Christine Baranski playing a role that struck me as vaguely anti-Semitic.

Pierce Brosnan cannot sing; when he tried, you could practically smell it.

I didn't know if I could live through the thing, but some Abba songs are brilliant. It is difficult to ruin "Dancing Queen," for instance, but they made a game effort.

I hear there's a Will Smith movie out called Seven Pounds or Nine Pounds or something. It's about organ donation and has something to do with a jellyfish. It's said to be horrendously bad. I will stay home.

2.) I will iron less.

This year I washed the laundry hamper's cotton liner and ironed it, having a rigid wrinkle-free discipline and a target: a well-pressed life. But this week, in my Christmas cleaning frenzy, I washed the ironing board cover.

Then I found myself staring at it, wondering how on earth I was going to iron it without a cover on the ironing board.

Of course I figured it out eventually. But still.

3.) I will read the times, not the eternities.

Having come this far without reading any Philip Roth since Goodbye Columbus and only one V.S. Naipaul, I might as well stick with that. It's unfair to damn authors because they're praised by people I detest, but I'm sick of geezers hailing glorious Roth. What a lump of bitumen he has become.

When there are new novels by Annie Proulx, Kate Atkinson, Doris Lessing, Joan Barfoot, Douglas Coupland, Ruth Rendell etc. — and the Booker got it right with The White Tiger this year — any sense of obligation to the alleged greats of another era is a waste of time. Especially with all this manga to read.

4.) I will not discuss weather.

It's boring. Unless actual trees are collapsing under the weight of ice, as they do in my neighbourhood occasionally, I will accept that weather is a part of daily life, much like going to the bathroom. It happens; one does not discuss it.

I still can't get over the BBC's big story last week, that it was snowing over all of Canada, a nation paralyzed by a novel substance. How was that international news? When it rains club soda and snows shortening, put it on the home page but not till then.

5.) I will stop buying embossed patent leather Italian Moro triangle totes and black buckled boots for a shiny life I do not in fact live.

Same goes for oversized clutch purses, ivory satin office separates and costume jewelry with grosgrain ribbon in the links. It's sad but factual: you don't have to dress up to write. Hairdressers have snaggle-tooth hair; fashion editors look pale, pimpled and wretched; it works for them.

6.) I will get a shiny life, maybe.

7.) I will open my TSA (tax-free savings account) at my nice local Bank of Montreal.

I will not go to my "investment manager." Nothing to do with money — the conferences, the quiet chats about risk management — is ever as complicated as they liked to tell us. Making money is simple, as 18 new senators learned last week courtesy of Stephen Harper. I, on the other hand, will have to work hard for my crust. Type faster, Heather. Type harder!

8.) I will heed the Pope's Christmas message.

I will defend heterosexuality as I would the Amazon rainforest. If this means doing it more, so be it. (See: I didn't even make a rude joke about religion here. I must be improving.)

9.) I will buy every movie made by the Coen brothers and watch them without pause.

I will be less like the hyperactive car dealer in Fargo and more like the peaceable Dude in The Big Lebowski. Hey man, the Dude abides.

10.) I will continue to hate the Ontario Municipal Board.

This is my shorthand for remembering to be grateful for our Canadian life. I know this sounds sappy and intellectually collapsible but I'm serious. When I look at the faces of children dying of cholera in Zimbabwe, or even imagine the local family who will get the frozen turkey my supermarket tussled me into donating with my President's Choice points, I think of those I most despise, the arrogant people who have cramped me, cost me and boiled up my bile. They are Bell Mobility and the Ontario Municipal Board.

And what a blessing it is to live in a country where that's the best head of hatred I can foam up. One company made me destroy my cell phone with a hammer. The other likes Wal-Mart.

How I suffer.