Happy New Year! 2024 is going to be the best year ever! No really, I mean it: I am all in for an unexpectedly awesome 12 months. But I’m done with ineffectual New Year’s resolutions. Here are the things I’m planning, no, going to do in 2024.

1. Get my own ferry — a super nice one with a poke bar, and reliable on-the-hour sailings, like the special people of Bainbridge have. That is not meant as an insult. They are special. Who’s up for a boat ride?

2. Have lots of dinner parties with people I don’t know very well and am kind of unsure about. Fun, right? I’ll call it Adventures in Socializing and will simultaneously develop tactics for justifying early termination. There’s a whole column there. Dinner, anyone?

3. Get a hot tub, from Costco, if necessary, by which I mean if they’re really expensive, which I suspect they are. They’re very healthy, like a cold plunge, only hot. Come on in, the water’s totally chlorinated!

4. Learn to salsa dance, with my wife of 40 years. We have pretended to salsa dance in the past, but it’s not the same thing, I’ve been told (by people who salsa dance and have seen us pretending). Quién quiere bailar?

5. Jump in the Sound, at least once a month, like the crazy people do. I don’t mean that pejoratively — it’s a kind of crazy I admire! You know who you are. You crazy. It’s apparently very good for you to have people think you’re crazy. All sorts of benefits. And if you skinny dip, people really give you space, which is nice. I dare you to do the polar plunge!

6. Be more like my dog. He’s 9 months old, very sweet, massively destructive, and has so much fun! I too will delight in ruining pillows and wooden staircases, bags of birdseed and entire couches. And there will be no real consequences for my misdeeds, because this is Vashon and pets rule! Who’s a good boy?!

6.5. Help other people find their lost pets, like the approximately 85 Islanders who helped me one terrible day in October, after our sweet pup (the older, more mature one) bolted when the wind blew open a door at 3 a.m. Again, you know who you are, and I love you. It’s a long story, but ended so well, thanks in part to the excellent work of two pet psychics. I’m not even kidding. So maybe what I’m saying is that I will become a pet psychic. I’m starting now, by staring at my dog. He seems nervous, and now I’m nervous. Maybe I am a pet psychic? Fido, you can run but you can’t hide!

7. Fix my driveway, which is actually a koan, an oxymoron, an absurd and self-contradictory proposition. It’s the remote homeowner’s mythic hero’s journey. We should annually award the Island’s Worst Driveway, create a small fund for one lucky winner, and watch how everyone then lets their driveways go to ruins. Wow, that got dark fast.

8. Sing Christmas carols. All year round. I’m really into carols, both the Holy ones and the secular ones about drunky-poo Rudolph. Never met a Christmas song I didn’t like. We go to one fantastic caroling party every year on Dec. 23, but this year I will sing them all the time, I don’t care what people say. I’m singing a Christmas carol right now — the best one, the national anthem of carols. Guess it!

9. Consume less coffee, alcohol, sugar, gluten, and grease. Goodbye Kahlua-soaked cinnamon bacon buns, hello quinoa kale kohlrabi tempeh bowls!

9.5 Decide to cancel number 9 and return to my regular scheduled program of enjoying life. Take back your diet!

10. Stop working so much and get together more, with everyone, just for fun. Or turn work, especially difficult work like fundraising, into fun, like the free party on Feb 1 at Open Space. This has not been a shameless plug, it was just a coincidence. Come out and play! (See Arts Briefs, page 7.)

11. Watch the sunrise, outside. It helps everything, and will make me more prone to attempting poetry, which is a good party trick. Be a poet and know it, yo!

12. Tell the people I love that I love them, that I appreciate them and I’m here for them. Yes, I will invest in my guardian angels, in my guardian community and family, in being held and cuddled and snuggled, and even though it makes me squirm, this year I will deeply appreciate it, and I’ll even snuggle back (ew).

It’s gonna be a great year, I can feel it.

Kevin Joyce is a writer, performer, teacher, and islander since 1989. He runs EnJoy Production with partner Martha Enson.