Not one of the original 156 episodes of “The Twilight Zone” features a pandemic. Now that you’ve lived through nine months of COVID-19, you may know why.

Some science facts are too unsettling for science fiction.

In first-rate science fiction, feeling scared is exhilarating. In a pandemic, it’s exhausting.

The biggest energy drain is the instability it brings. A pandemic doesn’t change the need for daily planning; it just brings such a tsunami of change to each that planning rather than doing dominates your days.

It wears you out.

And feeling worn out keeps you from feeling like creating a New Year’s resolution.

Moreover, even at the end of a normal year, making resolutions produces dismal results. According to U.S. News & World Report, four out of five are forsaken by February.

So don’t. Don’t make any sort of New Year’s resolution this year. Instead, do something far more important.

Take some time to take stock of yourself.

Don’t resolve anything. Review. Review how you handled last year’s important occurrences as a way to better know yourself.

The knowledge gained from this mental exercise could actually be more important to your overall health than any exercise you ever do. To provide a concrete example of the sort of personal review that will benefit you, let’s revisit something I’ve reviewed repeatedly: my retirement from teaching.

I spent a good portion of early August preparing for the school year. Updated all my government-mandated clearances. Got far more familiar with Google Classrooms.

Reworked a number of old lesson plans for use in a virtual classroom setting. Even worked a bit on the school yearbook.

I was especially looking forward to teaching this year because I had thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with two classes of seventh graders the year before, and I would be teaching almost all of them again.

On Aug. 11, however, I virtually attended an optional In-Service day that presented the instructional changes being instituted as a result of the pandemic. These changes were going to de-emphasize the elements of teaching that I value most and force me to spend more time doing things I’d rather not do.

Sometime after the first break in the morning session, I had decided to retire. By Aug. 14, the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System had received the pile of complicated paperwork needed to make my decision binding.

In a matter of three days, I had orchestrated a process that PSERS suggests you do over the course of a year.

Such abruptness reveals a part of my personality that you might call all-or-nothing mentality. While it can be a strength (as I believe it was in this case), it can also become a weakness.

It’s what makes me follow my workout schedule no matter what and ride long and hard on days when common sense (or cumulative fatigue) says to do the opposite. Sometimes such all-or-nothing mentality yields a great ride, but it’s just as likely to produce muscle aches, lethargy, and a foul mood - classic symptoms of overtraining.

But enough about me. Let’s say you review yourself and recognize that more than once last year you took a risk. A really dangerous risk. Yet each one worked out and made you feel fully alive.

Good for you - and not only because things worked out. Too many people do too much living without ever feeling alive.

But it’s just as good that you took stock and recognized that you possess a riverboat gambler’s mentality at times. That way you can guard against last year’s strength becoming this year’s weakness.

Such awareness is not a guarantee that you won’t get burned on a gamble next year, but if you do, you’ll now understand what’s happening and make adjustments. Mistakes do not have to remain mistakes if you uncover the cause - especially when the cause is you.

To close, this article may strike you as unsuited for this column. But the COVID-19 crisis has forced me to reassess health and fitness.

While I had always known that mental health was just as important as physical health, I had believed that working out regularly and eating properly were close to a cure-all for depression, the most common mental health condition there is.

But according to a study performed at Boston University, cases of depression in U.S. adults have tripled since the pandemic. And while many adults have eaten too much and not exercised enough during this time, others have done the opposite, proof that improving your physical health doesn’t always improve your mental health.

When times are especially emotionally tough, you may need to work on your mental health with the same focus a professional athlete gives to his or her workouts. That’s so much easier to do if you really know yourself.

So don’t make any resolutions for the new year.

Instead, review how you handled the old one and learn a thing or two about you.