I feel change coming—rather, it’s happening. (It’s not because of the new year, although that is a convenient marker.) It is strong enough that I feel like cutting off my hair. (The woman who changes hairstyle and wardrobe has taken a lover.) It feels like a chapter is ending and I would like that if it is the case. I’m ready to let this last period slip away.

It’s funny how commitment facilitates change. I guess I usually mistake commitment for stagnation rather than focused movement. When I was watching High Fidelity again recently, I suddenly thought, I'm just like Rob!, and that I like to believe it’s better to keep all of my options open than to commit to any one thing. But, it's as he discovers: life stagnates from the avoidance (the fear) of a path.

And I keep forgetting that anxiety only exists in paralysis, and that what makes it such a wretched condition is that very entrapment. There is a purity to genuine fear that makes it more organic, and hence transitory and endurable. But anxiety... that’s poison.

I didn’t know until it had started to subside that the weeks since gma died had been extremely stressful. All compartments were frozen. I had GREs, letters to write, work to find, an application to put together. That day I took the GRE the first time was a nadir of some kind. I remember coming home and feeling like I had put too much energy into other concerns, which was not entirely irrelevant because some of them were people I care about, but nevertheless, that energy was misdirected toward my own false savior, love. And I felt sad, remembering what I once knew. So, driving home from the test, I resolved to reclaim the epiphany.

As the deadline for the application approached, there was no choice but to plod toward it and also toward the deadline of an editing project that would provide much financial relief. The clincher was that everything was due on the same day. So I worked all the days at home and then went out to late-night cafes to work more.

I drove around for weeks listening only to Spahn Ranch’s "In Parts Assembled Solely," cranked and on repeat, it was so satisfying.

The final week, when I took the test and got the scores I wanted (and so, could put that task behind me), I started to feel lighter. When the editing and writing came together and was sent away on time, I felt better still. And when I wrote the final pieces for the application and witnessed in those final hours how something that had remained diffuse could suddenly congeal into something coherent and articulate, I experienced a sense of accomplishment I had never felt before.

I worked hard and I completed all of the tasks well. In the past, some sacrifice has always been made to ensure the achievement of one thing at the expense of others. But not this time, and it was rewarding.

I thought that when it was over I would have a lot of time to rest, but that hasn’t happened. First, it took awhile for the relief to settle. Then Andrew became quite sick with a tooth abscess, which landed him in the ER and made for a stressful couple of days. Later, social obligations and the frenetic nature of the season took over.

But some lazy moments: I made potato leek soup and reread All the Pretty Horses. McCarthy’s writing can be unexpectedly erotic. At first I thought this skill was rooted in reverence for the stories that come to him, but that's not quite right. It’s more that he yields to a story; he is ravished by it. Everything I have read of his is utterly submissive to the senses. It makes me think about how sensuality is consummately a passive event and that most of us, passive though we may be socially—or sexually—are uncomfortable with the absolute vulnerability that ultimate sensuality requires. And it seems to me that skill, then, is trust. When I read McCarthy, I enter a world where I feel entwined with him, mistakenly and fantastically, but more accurately, with his imagination, and where I am reminded that McCarthy is the only author I have ever wanted to hunt.

There hasn’t been enough time to rest. Now it’s time to start again—the process isn’t finished, but the deadline pressure is off for awhile.