I think the time has come to go on vacation. Rosh Hashanah sounds like an excellent occasion to take a little time out, to think, and most of all, to start the new Hebrew year with all these plans I've been putting off for the past five years. I need a drastic change in my lifestyle and I can't put it off any longer.

I'm not that young anymore, you see, and if I don't take the matter of my health in hand in the coming year, I don't know what will become of me. First of all, the cigarettes. Smoking is killing me, I know it. It's really doing me in. This year I must quit. Everyone's quitting, but like a little kid I just keep on going, keep on chain-smoking. I have no fitness to speak of. Just so you understand, I recently brought a chair into the tub because I couldn't stand under the shower for five minutes without getting wobbly. This has to stop. Last week I discovered I pant when I go up the steps at the mall, and I'm talking about the moving ones, the escalator.

Alcohol, now there's a serious problem. No, I'm not addicted, nor am I in denial. But every so often I feel a powerful need to drink to the point of unconsciousness. My body can't take it anymore, though. After a night of drinking, I need two days of physical rest and a whole week to recover mentally. This has to stop, completely. Not another drop. Well, maybe just wine, just a glass or two with Saturday lunch.

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I can't go on like this. I'm not a kid anymore, and me dancing alone in the middle of a restaurant to the sounds of "Badad Elekh" ("Alone I Shall Go") may have been an amusing scene ten years ago. Now it only draws pitying, scornful looks. This year I must start behaving like a responsible person. If I don't act now, things could deteriorate to the point where my daughter walks into a pub with her friends and sees her father making out with a chair.

I have to find another way to achieve the release I still need. Maybe folk-dancing, I don't know. This year I'm going to throw out the television, and not so it can be replaced with a flat-screen, as the rest of the family has been asking for, but so I can concentrate on reading books. This can't go on. My great fantasy of the epitome of joy is getting to sprawl on the couch in front of the TV and zap away with the remote until I find the program that requires the least intellectual effort to watch.

Horniness. I thought that the passage of time would be of some help here. Wrong. They promised that boys are at their peak at age 18 and that the decline sets in from then on. But out there in the field I've found this is not so accurate, and I don't have a whole lot of ideas as to how to improve the situation. All I can think of is castration.

And one more thing - vulgarity. I'm counting on kicking this habit, too, once I take care of all the aforementioned items.

So that's it. As you've probably noticed, I'm too tired and don't have much to tell. I'll take a vacation and come back raring to go like a lion. According to the plan, the first thing I must do is join a gym. Yes, I've already done so several times in the past, but this time I also intend to go there. I'll need comfortable sneakers and a sweat suit, maybe two, because I intend to go so often that one won't have enough time to dry after being washed.

I'll swim every morning. I'll leave the house early to go to the pool, at 5 A.M. maybe, and I won't take the car. I'll run to the pool, it's healthier. So I'll also have to buy some comfortable running shoes. Fitness goes hand in hand with fashion awareness, after all. I'll swim at least two kilometers each morning. Okay, I might not meet this challenge at the very beginning, but I'll build up to it before long. After my swim I'll go to the sauna to sweat a little, then a shower and a run back home - at a more leisurely pace now, not like in the morning when I was zooming. Another shower at home - that reminds me, I'll have to get the boiler fixed before winter - and then a yogurt and maybe some natural juice. Yes, I'll have to buy a juicer. I'm telling you, I'm breathing easier already just from having described it all.

After that, it'll be time to get down to work, and I'll be much more efficient, so I'll get the assignments done in minimum time. With so much free time on my hands, maybe I'll finally go back to school. Maybe even by correspondence, though of course I'd prefer to bike to the university. It has occurred to me to take up philosophy, now that with such a smooth blood flow to the brain I might actually start to grasp what Spinoza was trying to say. I'll be such a standout that all the other students will come to me for assistance, and I'll be magnanimous and gladly sit with them in the cafeteria and slowly explain all about metaphysics while citing earthly examples. These will mainly be beautiful female students who will desire me, rely on me and know that they don't stand a chance with me - for I'm clearly beyond all that. They'll know I'm helping them without the expectation of anything in return. "Wow, you're so smart," they'll say, meaning really - "What muscles!" and I'll say thank you and blush. Red, nicotine-free blood will swiftly course to my lean cheeks.

I'll always find a fascinating lecture to attend at some cultural center or other, and go there on my bike. I'll participate in the discussion and be the one who accompanies the guest lecturer on his way out to the parking lot, and he'll be very impressed with me and not think I'm a pest like the other people who usually hang around at the end in order to talk to him. I'll even enlighten him a bit on some matters related to his subject of expertise, and I'll do so very pleasantly, so as not to cause him embarrassment.

"Hi everyone," I'll say cheerfully when I come home in the evening, bicycle helmet in hand, only to find my wife doing yoga and my daughter playing the piano while her little brother accompanies her on the cello. He's barely a year old, but that's how it is in our family. The kids take an example from their father. I'll keep quiet until they're done and then I'll applaud and give them kisses. After I shower, I'll eat a green salad and only then will I check my messages, which will usually be from the bank. "We just wanted to see how you are today, sir," my personal banker will say, and then inform me of the profits I made that day.

So in the meantime, I wish you all a joyful holiday and I hope that in the coming year, this column, like its writer, will undergo a drastic change. In the coming year it will be a column about the good life, with tips and advice about health, proper nutrition and philosophies for a happy life. Cheers!