Column by Joe Hansen, Outdoors Editor

The nice thing about my New Year’s resolutions is I get to reuse them every year.

For example: Last year, I resolved to exercise more, eat healthier and be less grumpy. The year before? I resolved to exercise more, eat healthier and, you guessed it, be less grumpy. How am I doing? Well, suffice it to say I’ve failed miserably on all fronts.

This year, I’m taking a new approach. I’m setting goals I can and will actually achieve. I’ve heard people say that the key to goals is to be specific; general ones like “be healthier” are too broad and, all too often, lead to things like eating 15⁄6 pieces of cheesecake instead of two.

So as 2009 gets rolling, I have decided to set some specific, attainable goals for the new year.

First of all, I resolve not to make the same mistakes I made last year.*

From an outdoors perspective, that means I’ll make sure not to nearly drive my truck off a cliff at the Coos Bay Yacht Club (see column July 19); fall into the South Slough for no good reason (July 5); climb Humbug Mountain to find a girl (Aug. 2); try to innertube 12 miles in one afternoon (Aug. 16); or ever, under any circumstances, go “hiking” outside San Francisco again (Dec. 20).

Now those, I can do — probably.

Also, I resolve to give surfing a try on a day when a beginner should actually be surfing, rather than the mid-October, 6- to 8-foot swells I battled with Brian Menten on a Saturday morning (October 25).

“These waves are a bit too big for your first time,” Brian said, and he was right.

So sometime on a calm, warm day, I’ll go flail around in waves that wouldn’t be out of place in a bathtub. I’ll try it twice more, enough to decide if my future has surfing in it.

Santa brought me an inflatable boat this Christmas, so I resolve to use it. It’s not just any old inflatable boat, either. It’s the Cadillac of inflatable boats, a 14-footer with comfortable seats and an exterior you can hit with the sharp end of a hammer — it’s true, I saw it on the product video.

I’ll be the guy in Sunset Bay or various sloughs, lounging in my boat, watching people in cramped canoes and kayaks and saying, “Oh, how quaint.”

This will be the year I get serious about fishing again. Various nice folks in the area have offered to take me fly fishing; folks who know how, as opposed to me and my fishing partner — my brother Matt — who do not know how, and spend all day catching tree branches and our own clothing. So I resolve to take one or more of these experts up on their offers (you guys know who you are, so I hope you meant it).

And that’s all the outdoors resolutions I dare make, except for perhaps this last one; I resolve to save my money and buy some new rain pants. If I were to build a pair of pants out of sponges, it would be more resistant that what I currently have.

But mainly I pledge to appreciate, and take advantage of, the unique natural beauty of the South Coast of Oregon. I know this is something I can do in 2009, because I’ve already spent most of 2008 doing it.

And with that, here’s to a safe and happy 2009 in the great outdoors.

*Repeating mistakes from two years ago is fine.