I don't know. Is it? I don't feel sad, really, just curious, and maybe a little restless. How did I go from being such a gregarious creature to one who is essentially comfortable in solitude?

I liked the company of groups from the time I was a teenager. Call them cliques, if you will, but we cared for each other and we had fun together, whether it was four of us at Rocky Horror at the Key Theater in Georgetown or twenty of us having white pizza at that Sicilian place in Bethesda or five of us decorating the cars of the senior football players the night before homecoming (what a weird night). I was always out. I ran with a couple of groups in college. Politics is a cliquey, group-oriented business. I have virtually no structure in place to form or join a group right now.

I used to feel sorry for my mother, a stay-at-home mom who ferried the kids to soccer and gym and the barn and put dinner on the table every night. But she, as far as I could tell, was entirely content doing that. If she felt like doing something social, she did it, but she basically didn't. I didn't understand why she wasn't lonely. But I envied it. Even on my way out the door.

And now I'm sort of the same, minus the kids and the husband. This doesn't bother me. I look just like my father when I smile. We become our parents, and I was lucky with mine. But it's still kind of curious, and I think I'm not ready to be so static and solitary. Illness and circumstance got me where I am; will and luck will change things. I think.

I should have a greater appreciation for having quit smoking. That's a big deal. Smoking is more addictive than heroin. But my little secret -- aside from being helped in the early days by having mononucleosis -- is that I had absolutely no question in my mind that I could quit smoking. It was never an option to fail. I'm not disparaging others. It was just easier for me because I never doubted I could do it.

This sort of confidence is capricious. I tend not to be "positive" that I can do really stupid and dangerous things. That would put me in an entirely different psychiatric category.

But the same confidence can be put to other uses. Can I change my life? Do I believe I can, absolutely? Well, sure, to an extent (note use of qualifier phrase please). I'm not sure what I want to change and what my health will let me change. I don't want to dump my city life and move out to Colorado and raise horses, although that would be really cool for a few months. What's harder and would probably be better for me is to change what's here. I like it here.

I need to find a place to live. It all seems to come down to this right now, this and keeping up my workouts. It'll solve the never-move-the-car situation by giving me a parking space. It'll solve the laundry situation. It will allow me to breathe a little more deeply, something I need, something the gym also gives me with room to swing my arms and not hit anything.

Remind me about going to yoga classes at the gym. The whole idea of buying my own place scares the hell out of me. I have become my summer-camp counselors, my teachers, my riding instructors along with my parents. My last full-time employment ran me physically and emotionally into the ground with stress and deadlines and twelve-hour days. I'm not sure what's ahead, but I hope it's better and I hope I'm good at it. I was pretty good at my old job.

Everything is about to change. I think I can, I think I can.