If you do a search for New Year's Resolutions on the World Wide Web, you will find that resolutions fall into the same general categories, year after blessed year.

One category is health: lose weight, stop smoking, curb drinking, exercise more, decrease your stress levels.

Another category is finances: budget better, manage debt, save more money, get a better-paying job.

Another might be called altruistic: volunteer more, give more to charity, spend more time with family and friends.

And there is general self-improvement: learn something new, get a better education, get organized.

Which is all very well, but articles on New Year's resolutions also point out that the vast majority of resolutions are made to be broken.

Mark Twain once described New Year's Day as follows: Now is the accepted time to make your annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

There is a school of thought that says we should scrap New Year's resolutions entirely, since we're just setting ourselves up for failure anyway. Or, at the very least, we should postpone the making of resolutions until springtime, which is a far more logical time for fresh starts.

There is another school of thought that says we should still make resolutions, but that we shouldn't set the bar too high. Aim low, in other words. Don't plan to lose 50 pounds, for example, but rather aim for five.

Or, as Jay Leno says: Now there are more overweight people in America that average weight people. So overweight people are now average . . . which means, you have met your New Year's resolution!

Maybe the answer to the New Year's resolution conundrum is to make your resolutions as specific as possible to recent events in the news.

For example, we could all resolve to stop making jokes at Tiger Woods' expense. Oh, I know, I know, he's the answer to a late-night talk show host's dream. The jokes virtually write themselves. And, yes, I've laughed at more than a few of them.

But lost in the jokes is the very real pain of a broken family and the very real tragedy of a possibly broken career.

So let's resolve to continue to admire Tiger Woods as simply a great golfer, possibly the greatest golfer ever (he was, after all, named Athlete of the Year for 2009 by the Associated Press) and never to speak of his personal life again. It's a tall order, but I think we can do it if we try.

Another resolution we should all be making this year is to pack light when we travel. And I say WHEN, not IF, for the simple reason that I resolve that the recent botched terrorist attempt to bring down an American plane will absolutely not stop me from making future travel plans. In other words, I resolve not to live my life in fear. After all, it's probably statistically more dangerous to dodge the deer, elk and moose on our East Kootenay roads that it is to board a plane.

Any seasoned traveller will tell you that the rule of thumb when planning a trip is to decide how much luggage you need, then cut it in half. Then figure out how much spending money you need, and double it. It's amazing how far you can get with just a change of clothes.

Another good resolution might be to stop whining about how little good the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is doing for us folks in the East Kootenay region of the province.

My response is: so what? If you like the concept of Olympic sports, you'll have some great hours of TV viewing in February. If Olympic sporting events don't interest you, don't watch. The Games are on our doorstep, so enough of the whining and protesting already.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the arrival of the Olympic Torch in Cranbrook on January 22nd. And, hey, how about that Scott Neidermayer being named captain of the Canadian Olympic men's hockey team? What a great way to put Cranbrook on the map.

So, those are my resolutions for 2010: no more laughing at Tiger Woods, no more whining about the Winter Games, and no more fretting about luggage allowances when I plan a visit to a certain daughter who may be making her own resolutions in Prague, the city known as the Paris of the East in the Czech Republic.

I think I might even be able to keep these ones.

Happy 2010!