This past year was a humdinger. Here's a few of my New Year's Resolutions and latest insights into "The Adventures of Dr. Betty Dodson: A Sex-Happy Senior Citizen."

Health: My body must come first in the New Year. I promise to do some kind of movement every day to keep everything working. For the past few months I laid off of swimming and stretching and did a minimum of walking. I'm paying for it now with added body aches and pains. I blamed this relapse on traveling, but I don't want to get fat like so many business men who use this as an excuse to eat crappy food and not exercise.

Sex: I promise to increase the number of orgasms I have with myself. The year before, I stopped having regular partnersex with Eric for several reasons. I'm currently in the process of understanding heterosexuality on a much deeper level, but it's too soon to articulate. When I get a better handle on this, I will write about it. I'm open to meeting my next fun sex partner, but we will not live together.

Relationship: This past year Eric dropped gaming, started lifting weights consistently, and returned to his martial arts study. He spent two weeks in Japan and is attending class several times a week. He's becoming irresistible, but I don't want him to be the main source of my sexual expression. We are going into our ninth year of living together. Eric is not only my roommate, business partner, apprentice, best friend and adorable Puppy, he's an important part of my family.

Friendships: In Phoenix, I reconnected with Sheila Shea who now lives in Tucson. She was my first sexual girlfriend and support system when I created the now infamous Bodysex Groups back in the seventies. Sheila was also my business partner for two years. We were more like "fuck buddies" than lesbian romantic lovers. She was very central in my life during those early days of feminist activism. I still love her dearly.

Another renewed long term friendship is Linda Colonna. After a ten year separation, she invited to me for a day at Sassoon on my birthday last August. When we went to lunch I learned that she'd been struggling with health problems and didn't feel like being social. Linda and I met in 1952. I was going to art school while working part-time at an ad agency where Linda was the receptionist just out of high school. Many years later, I had a year long affair with her former husband; my Karate Lover.

One of my most passionate "love/hate" long-term connections is Grant Taylor. He was my first post-marital lover in 1965. Through him, I learned I wasn't genitally deformed which set up a life-long appreciation for him. We went on to explore groupsex until 1970 when we went off with other lovers and became best friends. Throughout the seventies he was my mentor, editor, devil's advocate, and always a consistent pain-in-the-ass due to his bad disposition. Today it goes my other names like manic-depressive or bi-polar. In the eighties, we collaborated on my sexual autobiography. AIDS had everyone terrified of sex so my memoir with happy casual sex found no publisher. Grant had a massive stroke in my office in 1993. I was his only support system and I resented the fact that he'd alienated everyone but me. A couple of years later, Grant asked if he could build a website for me and I said, "Yes." After his loss of speech, he re-educated his brain by learning HTML and my website went up in 1996. For the past eleven years, he's been my webmaster. Similar to having an aging parent that I constantly worried about, this year he married his housekeeper/nurse which was a huge relief. She is happy to be his caregiver and he enjoys her large Dominican family.

Business: My new partnership with Carlin Ross has been a leap of faith into a very exciting unknown space with tremendous possibility. We are equal partners in an LLC corporation, signed, sealed and delivered contractually to create an internet television show and combine our websites. She interviewed me last June for a pod cast. This 34 year old hottie-techno-whiz had a successful career as a lawyer and is one of the few young sex positive feminists I've ever met. Sexually speaking, she is so much like me, it's as though I'm reliving my early feminist days again through her. Traveling with Carlin has been a breeze. She's like an executive assistant who handles all the details of booking tickets, hotel reservations and she comes with a mobile media unit in her backpack that consists of podcast equipment, computer, Blackberry and camera. Eric and Carlin get along great and he knows he's not being pushed out. I'm expanding the business and Carlin has the skills we need. Even Grant will have a space on the new website. I have managed to grow my business without killing anyone off. We hope to go online in a few months. People are gonna love our new interactive website.

Creativity: It seems the Goddess elevation period when I was 77 in 2007 has paid off. I've never been more involved in writing, lecturing, producing new media and making changes. Bringing my art out of the closet looks like perfect timing according to the response I've been getting from my latest DVD, "Betty Dodson: Her Life of Sex and Art." Another DVD is nearly ready to go titled: The Orgasm Doctor. It shows me working with one client documenting my sex coaching process in detail. I have also created several short clips, running time 4 min to 30 min that folks will be able to download from the new website. Carlin and I intend to produce erotic sex ed that will put all the formulaic porn producers to shame. Once the site is up, I will most likely get out pen, ink and magic markers to create my own brand of sex art. The creative juices are flowing so easily that I rarely think about having an orgasm because it feels like I'm in one long, hot, continuous orgasmic rush.

Politically: As most of my friends know, I am still very active in the grassroots movement with MoveOn.org, World Can't Wait and TruthOut.org. This took place soon after 2000 when Bush got selected by our no longer Supreme Court that's become an arm of the Republican party. Instead of ignoring politics as I did for years, now I can't keep my mouth shut as I watch the U.S. government declare war on sex. First it was the Republican war on drugs, then they declared a war on terrorism. The war on sex really means a war on women's rights! Once they get rid of legalized abortions, they will go after eliminating birth control. Women will be relegated to the role of wives and mothers with no say in any policy making decisions. The Christian Right means to turn America into another fundamentalist fascist regime under the pretense of spreading democracy. We would be just like all the other Islamic countries. To set the record straight, America's sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies has enough of us still alive today that the evangelical Christians will never be able to abolish Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll. Sexual pleasure belongs to the people and there it will stay because the majority of Americans still honor sexual autonomy and freedom of choice.

Happiness: I've come to understand that for me to bask in feelings of happiness, I need to be challenged to the point of being terrified. That's what gets my adrenalin going which feeds my creative impulses and keeps me moving forward. Now that number 8 is coming up, I've been asking myself questions like: what would I like to accomplish, be, or do when I'm in my eighties. I can tell you right now that I will probably do romantic partnersex just one more time. Once a romantic junkie, always a romantic junkie! This next round will be more about mental and emotional stimulation with less focus on the physical. Living a sexual life has been my guiding light, my spiritual path. Now I want to leave a legacy based upon Sexual Happiness for as many people as possible by recording, documenting and archiving my life's work. The new year is headed in this direction. I'm committed to having a great 2008. By all means join me.

Betty Dodson, Havana Cuba, Dec 2007

Happy New Year