As people try to get over the holidays and packed away the December decorations, one thing they can't get out of their minds: What happened 2016? Wasn't just a few months back that we parted the new year in?

We can approach the end of the year in two ways:

First, we can think of the year like a cafeteria line where at the end sits a grumpy looking cashier counting the things you've picked up and put a tray. It's time to pay.

Second, we can pretend there is no accountability in our lives, nothing to worry about, and no paying for errors. We can just go blithely into the New Year continuing old practices of the past, good or bad.

The former is the way of younger people, millenniums they are now called. It's the path followed by people not old enough to remember pain or tragedy or the fact that life demands and extracts its payments for continued errors and abusive conduct -toward both others and ourselves.

Wiser people choose the first option and are already playing with the notion of whether or not to make those damnable New Year's resolutions.

As we go about cleaning up our dwelling and getting our physical house in order, now is the time to make our game plan for the coming year. The truth is that either we make our own game plan and follow it or someone else will make it for us, and we will be following theirs. If you make only one resolution for the coming year, make it that you will be your own man. Have you made mistakes that need correcting? Physically, mentally, job-wise, politically, or religiously. Errors of commission or omission? If so, then start now on a new plan and road in the New Year.