I shall kill fewer trees in 2010!  It just hit me that it’s almost January in the year 2010 and I’ve yet to make a single New Year’s resolution. Swimming around upstairs are the familiar old devils about weight loss and taking that horseback ride from here to Canada. With a daughter nearly 7, I’m going to have to postpone the later for at least a couple of days.

I considered the usual empty promises: writing better, making a ton more money, getting in better shape.

Having a rosier outlook, being kinder to my fellow man — especially from this soap box pulpit, taking time to smell the proverbial roses — these are goals all well and fine.

But you know what really needs resolving in my life?

Paper.

I’m drowning in the stuff.

I am one perverse and intent Paul Bunyan. Entire forests are sacrificed every year to satiate my personal and professional needs. Don’t get me wrong. I do recycle. In fact, I’ve taken the first drafts of my novel and are using them as scratch pads. Still. I am surrounded by paper.

There’s 2009 to still close out with all those receipts. I’ve yet to start my 2010 bookkeeping and add to that all the notes I keep for columns, local history, novels, a daily things-to-do list and a “Master Blaster” list of things that I want to get done. I have two four-drawer legal-size filing cabinets filled with paper — and that’s just pending stuff. There are bills, letters, memos and, of course, this column. I keep notebooks on all my columns. I’ve started to collect tips on parenting. I’ve got blueprints on that log cabin estate I want to build some day. Foof and boy howdy, I’m nuts enough to consider writing an entire encyclopedia.

I keep catalogues with Post-Its attached for gift ideas and owner’s manuals for everything from a bevy of remote controls to all my power tools.

There is a log for my blood sugar, message pads by every phone and even cute cartoons from The New Yorker posted on the refrigerator.

I am awash in paper. I have the succinct impression that I passed critical mass maybe back in October and now, I now longer manage paper, paper manages me.

It is both a cruel and useful god.

I’m not even talking about e-mail and this wonderful invention of the computer, which are sort of defacto paper.

How did I get kidnapped so?

There were monks who spent a lifetime, laboriously working on writing in one book. They didn’t have Weeks-at-a-Glance or The Babes of The Pac 10 Calendar.

Of course, the simple and ancient friars didn’t enjoy toilet paper or that material near and dear to my heart and nose — sing it with me, readers — Kleenex.

I have boxes and boxes of memorabilia — newspaper clippings yellow and aged of me as a young fellow. I’m me in these photos, but thinner, gawkier, perhaps a bit more stern. I’m accepting a check for some award in the 1960s. I have volumes of photo albums I haven’t opened in decades. Photos count as paper, don’t they?

I’ve got boxes of pictures I’ve taken in recent years that I probably will never have the time to transfer to proper albums and speaking of pulp products, there are boxes of wrapping paper — regular occasion and Christmas — about the house.

Certainly, there have been men in history who have led rich, meaningful lives without collecting a single love letter or coupon that guarantees them 5 percent off their next visit to Pavilions.

I’m far from a Ludite. I don’t want to live any sort of Taliban-like existence, dumber than a bug and forsaking modern life.

But I am swimming in paper.

It’s not like I’m a pack rat. I do throw the stuff away.

Actually, I burn it.

In the cold winter evenings, I end up burning a good-sized box a week of junk mail (not the catalogues; I recycle). I keep feeding rolled up balls of information terribly important to some but not me into the fireplace. It comes close to the point where I don’t have enough time to burn my discarded paper — or maybe I just need a bigger fireplace.

January is the month entries for most of the journalism awards are due. Forms must be filled out, sometimes in triplicate. Tearsheets from stacks of newspapers must be sent and sometimes photocopied.

With these dreaded übermodern times, it’s necessary to know how the microwave works or to have handy a menu or 43 of all the great places in town that offer take-out.

But I’m hearing a distant rumbling. It’s the sound you feel in your gut more than you hear. It’s that sensation that you’re at the wrong place on the mountain right before the avalanche breaks.

I know about palm pilots and back-up iMac storage. They’re paper.

You’re thinking I’m a hypocrite. And you’re right.

If I was so all-fire intent on making some New Year’s resolution about not drowning in paper, you’d think I would have simply scribbled: “Cripes, I’ve a lot of paper”  at the top of this page and left the remaining 14 inches of white space as a serene open space fit for contemplation. 

John Boston- Commentary

John Boston, aka Mr. Santa Clarita Valley, was recently named Best Humor Writer in North America to go along with 117 other major writing awards. With each award is a certificate — in paper. His webpage, thebostonreport.net, is undergoing a brand new hepcat national look and will be unveiled soon. Tune into his weekly radio show, “The Former Friends of John Boston” on KHTS AM 1220 every Monday at 2 p.m.