This year will be better than last year, won’t it? Because every year gets better than the one before, particularly when you’re the kind of person who can make resolutions and stick to them. That’s me: resolved to make a resolution and stick with it.

WHAT’S MY secret? I’ve learned to make resolutions that make sense. I’ve learned to make resolutions that are devoted to increasing my pleasure and joy in life.

Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well, when you think about it, most resolutions are kind of draconian — I’ll drink less, eat less, indulge fewer vices, pinch more pennies. Resolutions are typically about having less fun, doing fewer of the things that you enjoy so much that they’ve become habits. Like eating.

A few years ago, for instance, I resolved to lose a little weight. I can’t even tell you why I decided upon this tack, it just seemed like the trendy thing to do. It seemed easy enough: exercise more, eat less. The only thing was, exercising more made me hungrier — at a time when I was supposed to be cutting back on calories. I was miserable. Talk about a resolution with an incompatible solution.

I thought hard about what all this meant and ended up totally confounded by why I’d chosen to embark upon such a silly regimen. Sure, for a few years, I’d noticed that my weight had been creeping upward — in the quarter century since I graduated college, I’d gained about 15 pounds. Every few years I had to get a new wardrobe to accommodate my expanding waistline. Some people consider this a hardship and resolve to fit into their clothes year after year. But I like new clothes.

It would have been one thing if my added poundage had been accompanied by a loss in self-esteem, a run of bad luck or social ostracization. But a lot of good things had happened during this time: I’d gotten married, had some kids, got a string of ever-more-gratifying jobs, found a nice place to live. All of this development was directly related, I believe, to my increased physical stature. That resolution to lose weight totally contravened my upward mobility.

So every year since that silly mistake, as I’ve gotten older, wiser and fatter, I’ve resolved to have as good a year as I had the year before. And being the superstitious sort, I believe that involves sticking with my game plan of gaining a pound or two a year, having as much wine as I like with dinner and eating dessert.

Perhaps you’re getting the drift. Our independent American spirit requires that we be beholden to nothing, so if a behavior becomes habitual it is labeled as bad. Habits are enslaving, the ethic goes, made to be broken. The powerful Puritan vein still runs deep. It’s time we all thought more like the French. Add a cheese course to your menu. Resolve to work less, not more. Drink wine with lunch.

If you can’t shake the urge to resolve come New Year’s, think hard about what’s motivating you. Is it guilt? Let’s say you resolve to be nicer to your nasty, truculent aged neighbor. Why would you do that? If the neighbor didn’t deserve your wrath, you wouldn’t deliver it upon him. Resolve instead to tell him what an unfun creature he is. Maybe he’ll be the one to change.

Resolutions to have more fun, eat better food, take more vacations, be less ambitious, spend more money on frivolous items, goof off more at work — those are resolutions we should all get behind. Yeah, yeah, I know, there are some resolutions that must be made. Resolve to quit smoking? Duh! Resolve to promote world peace, racial harmony, economic equality? I’m down. But resolve to cut back on (fill in the blank). Let’s all resolve not to resolve.