One of the few pleasures of having a birthday between Christmas and New Year’s is that you have vacation time to reflect on the upcoming year. This inevitably develops into something that looks like a long list of self-improvement items. I am not sure why this is such a fixture in my life, but it is.

This year, with all of my international travels in November, I had lots of fly time to get started early. It being the final year of the decade, some of the items were a little more unusual. My usual lust for learning took on a slightly more educational cast.

As a mom of college kids, I have had years of projecting my yearnings onto them. The result is that they are fluent in a few languages…while I am not.

So top of the list is: Learn Spanish.

This year—freshly inspired by all of the remarkable Latin American entrepreneurs I meet through Endeavor.org—I am determined to dust off my college Spanish, really apply myself, and finally learn how to speak the language. I write this as I send my daughter Lucy off to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, during January break to learn Spanish…while I stay home.

But wait…there is more. On to the good bits:

Any of you who have ever received an email from me know that I am among the most pathetic of spellers and typists. I have been accused of all kinds of afflictions, the worst of them being unmentionable here. So, rather than continue to wait for voice-to-text interfaces to catch up to my speaking speed, I am taking the leap: typing lessons.

This year, I intend to be a Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing success story. I was laughing so hard yesterday as I took the Getting Started lesson and found that my stated goal of 70 words per minute, which seemed reasonable at the time (I have lots of journalist pals who way out-type that), hit up against my 87% accuracy at 10 wpm. Making my score a whopping 9 AWPM. Let me be clear: That is 9 words, typed poorly, per minute.

I promise to stay honest and give periodic updates about my adventures with Mavis as I inch up from a whopping 9 to 70 wpm, my goal.

Know, my friends, that 2010 will be the year of the typo-free emails from me. By November or so.

If only you could see how much red ink is on this post…eeeeeek!

Happy Holidays and an amazing New Year.

Let’s make it about plans and goals and less about drunken midnight resolutions.