I just finished making my New Year’s resolutions. I’m a little late this year because the final games of the regular NFL season were being played over the weekend. I’ve finally completed this important task, however. So here’s my 2012 must-do list:

1. Give up smoking. I make this my first choice every year because I don’t smoke and therefore am sure to actually keep this one. Its my perennial confidence builder, the perfect kick start on my personal resolution road.

2. Begin campaigning for a victory in the 2016 Iowa caucuses this Wednesday. This will give me a full four years to eat dinner and go bowling with every resident of Iowa. And who wouldn’t want to do that?

3. Become a soccer hooligan. I like sports and the comraderie that comes with fandom. Group physical intimidation by rowdy drunks can help develop that sort of esprit. Also, the entry level threshold here is very low.

4. Get a highly paid sinecure at a conservative think tank. Work at these institutions provides fewer paid vacation days than being in congress, but you have to be a millionaire before you can land a place in that club and I fall well short. I’ve already mastered the necessary rhetoric to work at a conservative think tank: “The government is the problem.” “Unshackle the job creators.” “Class envy.” “Obama did it.” So why not cash in?

5. If I can’t get a position in a conservative think tank, I’ll just shave my head, deliver the same phrases with a snarl, and become an election year broadcaster.

6. Find two snowflakes that are exactly alike. This is downtime work. Filler for the more important stuff. Don’t want to be caught loafing in 2012.

7. Get a poet laureate or poet-in-residence gig. The other day Sonia Sanchez was named poet laureate of Philadelphia, my own hometown, so that job is filled. But there are 50,000-plus government jurisdictions in this country and one of them would almost certainly like to have a poet laureate like me — or anyone else for that matter. The same is true of poet-in-residence honors. While a major university may be out of reach, a small college, a suburban high school, heck, a family that does its own home schooling. I’ve always been willing to lower the bar to succeed.

I am thus resolved. So to 2012 I can now say with confidence: Bring it on! But please, only a little bit at a time.

Silverstein’s soon to be published new book — This God-Awful Political Season (In Verse)