may be paved with good intentions, but I’m eager to believe that a well-considered plan can take you someplace fabulous just as easily. Eager, commonly associated with beaver, an animal not so much known for its wisdom or global thinking, but hey, teeth are good. On the plus side (and I’m not only referring to girth and the “ungainly waddle” here), National Geographic touts that “beavers are second only to humans in their ability to manipulate and change their environment.” I may be dragged into each new year kicking and flinging obscenities, but I do plan to channel a bit of that busy-beaver energy for good. So yeah, eager as a rodent for change.

1) Create. I will write and I will make art. I will clean off my art tables and use them. I will close the computer; I will not check email every time the phone beeps. I will not put every request ahead of my own need to create. At least one day a week. And that day will be Tuesday.

2) Eat. I will cook more. I will cook European. Not only is the food healthier — it’s beautiful, and it’s soul-satisfying. If I can’t live on the other side of the Atlantic and toss together suppers of dirt-fresh market finds on the terrace, I can make the plates pretty enough and healthy enough and al fresco enough to pretend.

3) Love. I will make more of an effort, or a wiser or more intuitive effort, to connect with those who are difficult to access — those who are afraid to love, don’t know how to love, have been hurt by love, can’t trust, won’t trust, whose hearts have been trampled, or who simply haven’t a clue what love is, how to express it, or how to sit back, open their arms, and receive it. I will try harder to give without being afraid of the response.

4) Discipline. I feel bad that this isn’t the discipline my husband might long for (I can be an unruly child), but it’s the practice my spirit covets, and that is silence. Not a constant silence (I love to warble and whistle and dance), but a deliberate one — a chosen rest. Not a lack of communication (because real communication is everything), but simply a lack of spoken words. I suck with words. I say the wrong thing in the wrong tone and worry too much about the word choices and tones of others. I’m hypervigilant when it comes to verbal communication, and it’s exhausting. I’m going to gift myself one day each week free of that weight.

I’m raring to go, but there seem to be a few things to attend to first — a four foot high porcelain poodle in one of the guest beds, a blonde wig left over from a LOST party on the towel bar, a red patent leather slingback on a nail near the kitchen cornice molding, and of course the trail of gingerbread crumbs moistened with butterscotch schnapps leading from the computer table to the Swallowing Sofa and back again.

On the other hand, touches of whimsy are so necessary to a Well-Lived Life.