I wake up on the first of January totally energized, excited by the promise of the new year stretching out before me.

(Okay, that was this year, because my 2007 New Year’s Eve was criminally boring.  Most years I wake up totally traumatized, hoping for the promise of healthy liver function.)

I don’t actually make resolutions, because that would involve serious reflection, the commitment of goals and dreams to paper, and the pursuant guilt associated with having a record of my failure to become the self-actualized human being I convinced myself I could be after spending the final week of the previous year overeating, oversleeping, and not working.

Frankly, that kind of self-flagellation depresses me, especially before February.

Rather, I prefer to just enjoy the opportunity for pleasant self-delusion that each New Year’s brings.

And I’m not just talking about your Auld Lang Syne scenario, either.  By the time Rosh Hashanah rolls around in September or October, it’s been so long since January that the idea of a New Year feels novel, and I get suckered into luscious daydreams of renewal and rebirth all over again.

It’s delightful, really, that sort of reverie -- much more enjoyable, and affordable, in fact, than even a venti vanilla latte with a toffee almond bar at Starbucks (a true tastebud tour de force, if you’ve never experienced the two together).

That’s why I’m so juiced about the Chinese New Year.

Last week, when my wistful imaginings of early January seemed so 1997, the media outlets I count on for my misinformation slapped me awake with the news that it was time for the Lunar New Year, wooing me with yet another invitation to hallucinate about clean slates.

Immediately, I was dreamy.

But this is no ordinary New Year, at least not for me:  it’s the Year of the Pig.  (Or, depending on who you’re talking with, the Year of the Boar.)

Born as I was in September of 1971, this is my year.  (If you were born in 1995, 1983, 1959, 1947, 1935, or 1923, it’s your year, too (well, pretty much).  If you were born in 1911, it’s your year, and you’re really, really old.  Mazel tov!)

Sure, go ahead and laugh.  Maybe it would seem “cooler” to be born in the Year of the Dragon, or the Year of the Tiger or the Snake, but in Chinese astrology (not to be confused with Chinese Democracy, the eternally forthcoming studio album from Guns N’ Roses), “a pig signifies intelligence, honesty, strength, and fortitude,” “the Pig type is usually an honest, straightforward and patient person,” and “those born in pig years tend to have excellent manners, make and keep friends, work very hard, and appreciate luxury.”  Boo-yah!

Plus, pigs don’t just signify intelligence, they are intelligent.  According to Dr. Donald Broom of the Cambridge University Veterinary School, pigs “have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated.  Even more so than dogs and certainly three-year-olds.”  Take that, three-year-olds!

Indeed, Dr. Bruce Lawhorn, a swine expert at Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, asserts that pigs rank behind only chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants in the smarts department.  “They are considered the smartest of the ‘barnyard’ animals and can be easily trained,” says Lawhorn.

I myself am no swine expert (though I’m contemplating having new business cards made up, just so I can list that as my title), but when I look at the list of Pig luminaries -- Johnny Knoxville, Flavor Flav, Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Magic Johnson, Thomas Jefferson, Jimmie Walker, Elton John, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Alfonso Ribeiro, Borat -- it’s pretty clear I have no reason to envy Dogs.

(Actually, that’s not entirely true.  I was thinking about how much I enjoy each of the New Years each year, and I realized that if one human year equals seven dog years, a dog gets that New Year’s boost every 52 days.  No wonder dogs always seem so optimistic.)

But if all that’s not enough to prove that Pigs like me kick ass, dig this:  they’re having a baby boom in China.  Why? 

Because the Year of the Pig is a good year to be born.  According to the Washington Post, “Beijing hospital officials surveying busy birthing and prenatal care wards predicted a 20 percent increase” in babies born this year, and “Chinese companies ... that manufacture diapers, baby care oils and infant foods [have] increased their advertising budgets by more than 50 percent.”

Prospective parents in China have been told for generations that “children born under the pig's patronage will benefit from the animal's image as fat, happy and prosperous.”  Some of the rush to deliver this year stems from a belief that we are in not only a Year of the Pig, but a Golden Year of the Pig, “which comes along once every 60 years and showers extra-powerful blessings on those born during its passage.”

However, Ye Chunsheng, a culture researcher at Guangzhou's Sun Yat-Sen University and deputy secretary general of the China Folklore Society, says that’s not the case.  “This year is not golden, it is earthen,” he clarified.  “The last Golden Year of the Pig was 1971, and the next one should be 2031, with 60 years as the full cycle.”

You know who was born in the last Golden Year of the Pig?  Yep.  This guy.

I’ve got a feeling this is going to be my year.