You say you want a resolution? A landmark birthday inspires a host of self-improvement vows, big and small - Cooldown - Brief Article

Men's Fitness, July, 2002 by Jeff Weinstock

Turned 35 the other day. Thirty friggin' five. Thirty ... five. Any way you punctuate it, it still comes up old. I've left the blessed 18-to-34 demographic, which means advertisers no longer care that I watch Charmed. Time for some self-reckoning. Time to acknowledge that dreams deferred are now dreams denied. It's fair to say I won't be winning Wimbledon, romancing Elle MacPherson, canning salmon in Alaska, dunking a basketball, discovering the lost language of Crete. Time to discard the imagined for the feasible. Time to live amid the achievable, the reasonable, the regular, the compromised. Time to pledge to do 35 things before I turn 36.

1 If Get in better shape.

2 Stay in better shape.

3 Stop trying to wear my hair like Corey Haim.

4 Recognize that shelf life of Corey Haim references expired in 1989.

5 Admit to being a back man, even if "Check out the back on her" doesn't resonate with the fellas.

6 Stop referring to the Los Angeles Lakers as "we."

7 Locate my car's fan belt.

8 Have someone tell me what it does.

9 Get a decent haircut.

10 Cook Something other than pasta and English muffin pizza.

11 Stop trying to calculate how old Anna Kournikova will be when I'm 45.

12 Learn the answer to the trick question, "Is Australia a country or a continent?"

13 Keep trying to walk cool.

14 View slo-pitch softball as an athletic alternative, rather than an old dudes' game.

15 Achieve lifelong dream of becoming invisible.

16 Eat breakfast. Take vitamins. Learn French. Read more. Win Lotto. Rule world.

17 Stop privately mocking the power walkers while I'm out running. (But they look so goofy!)

18 Instruct voice in head to stop calling me "Jeffaroo."

19 Stop brown-nosing the boss, even if the boss is the irreproachable Jerry Kindela of MEN'S FITNESS.

20 Reduce 35th-birthday resolutions from 35 to 20.