My annual list of totally optional, merely suggested things for Baltimore Sun readers to do in the new year begins with this: Don’t make resolutions.

Instead, make a list of 12 things you’d like to do in 2025 — just one per month — then check them off as you go.

This is more practical than making resolutions that invite futility and, ultimately, make you feel like a loathsome sluggard.

I’ll make two suggestions for each month (plus one, for a total of 25 to go with the new year) to get you started. But come up with your own — 12 things you’ve been meaning to do for a while — and stick the list on the refrigerator.

January: Buy some stationery — in Baltimore, there’s Paper Herald on St. Paul Street — get a good pen, and spend one afternoon writing (yes, by hand!) a few, brief letters to a few old friends. … Attend the Jan. 18 revival of H.L. Mencken’s Saturday Night Club, with music, food and drink at the Mencken House in Union Square. A fundraiser to benefit the house as well as the restoration of Mencken’s piano, it’s envisioned as the first in a series of Saturday night gatherings.

February: Spend one winter afternoon writing letters to Republicans in Congress, urging them to extend the prescription drug benefits of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. … Visit “Lynching in Maryland,” a permanent exhibit that opened in October at the the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture “to honor the victims of the 38 documented racial terror lynchings that occurred in the state between 1854 and 1933.”

March: Get to a bookstore: Greedy Reads, The Ivy, Charm City or, on the Eastern Shore, The Bookplate in Chestertown. … Cook something challenging: Try to bake a timpano, the Calabrian pasta-meat-cheese concoction, shaped like an upside down kettle drum, made famous in the film, “Big Night,” and featured in Stanley Tucci’s cookbook. (This was on my list last year, but I didn’t get to it.) … Bonus suggestion: Actually attend Baltimore’s Saint Patrick Parade on Sunday, March 16.

April: At mid-month, drive to Darlington in Harford County, park near the Stafford Road Bridge and find a place to watch the herring and shad run up Deer Creek. If you don’t spot fish there, drive across Conowingo Dam to the hamlet of Sleepy Hollow; you’re bound to see the migrating fish in Octoraro Creek from the Dr. Jack Road Bridge. … On a rainy day, make a long-overdue visit to a public library.

May: If you’ve never actually seen a Baltimore oriole in the flesh — or, pardon me, in the feather — get some binoculars and head to Cromwell Valley Park in Baltimore County. Your chances of seeing one are good there. Look for them in tall sycamores, and near Minebank Run. … If you’ve never actually seen Baltimore’s Kinetic Sculpture Race, do yourself the favor and mark it on the calendar: May 3.

June: There are a couple of times this month when the Orioles play a day game away. Watch it at the Swallow at the Hollow, York Road and Northern Parkway. It’s a great place to hang out and talk baseball (or any sport) with customers and bartenders. … In the first week of the month, you can watch artists painting street scenes in Annapolis, en plein air.

July: You can work up a nice sweat and then cool off by hiking the upper Gunpowder River trail in Baltimore County, finishing at the Prettyboy Reservoir dam. The mist from the bottom-water of the reservoir spilling into the pool below the dam drops the air temperature 10 to 15 degrees. … If you haven’t been to Prigel Family Creamery in Glen Arm for an ice cream, this is the time to do it.

August: Head to Garrett County and hike up Backbone Mountain to the highest point in Maryland (3,360 feet). … Or go to Snow Hill, Worcester County, and rent a canoe or kayak to paddle the Pocomoke.

September: Go to a Navy football game; you’ve been meaning to do that for years. The Midshipmen have at least three home games in Annapolis and the Army game in Baltimore in December. … Look for August Wilson plays at Everyman, Spotlighters and Chesapeake Shakespeare during the fall, part of the ongoing Wilson celebration at Baltimore theaters.

October: Give yourself the Charles Street Challenge: Starting at the old Pabst Brewing Company on the south side of the city, walk Charles Street all the way to Bellona Avenue on the north. (This will probably take more than one day.) … Visit Green Ridge State Forest in Allegany County and enjoy the fall foliage (and perfect solitude) from the observation deck there.

November: This is the start of a great time to see the migrating bald eagles along the Susquehanna River at Conowingo. It can be an epic experience. … Open your house for board games — Monopoly, Ticket To Ride, Stratego, Scrabble — set them up on different tables, invite your friends and neighbors to drop by and play. You’ll wonder why you didn’t do it before.

December: The annual illumination at Antietam National Battlefield happens as darkness falls on the first Saturday in December: 23,000 candles on the fields where thousands died to save — and thousands more died to end — the union during the Civil War. … Do all your holiday gift shopping in thrift stores or in neighbor bulk trash; it worked out beautifully for me this year.