"On your toes; chest forward; knees high; arms locked," I think, racing my dog, Kaya, down a quiet forest path in Monterey. The never-ending shades of green and brown blur around us and nothing but the thrill of movement crosses our minds. Kaya throws her whole body into the hurdle forward as I do my best to keep pace. Like magic, we lose contact with the earth: four paws and two feet in the air. We are floating. Carried by the ferocity of our speed, we are weightless and for a moment, the masters of the universe.

The new year knocks and wonders about our intentions for it. I've always had an holier-than-thou response to new year's resolutions: don't wait for the turn of the calendar to make a change, just do it now. That's true as far as it goes, but I should probably just shut up and let people imagine what can be different. With these inspired plans, failure is an option, even likely, and that's okay. Let's be happy with growth, however uneven.

Maybe I have a standoffish approach to resolutions because I haven't figured out the right container for them. Sometimes it seems like I'm waiting around for the right metaphor. It's a lifelong habit, I suppose, even an obsession. For example, the idea of marriage didn't make a lot of sense to me until I thought about trees for a long time, now it's so firmly rooted in me that I don't know another way of being. Maybe to craft resolutions I just need the right vessel for them, some metaphor to build the year around.

In that earnest spirit, out of the dark yesteryear, I hope to be running fast enough to be weightless, lost in the bliss of movement. Now my feet won't touch the ground.