it's been decided. having come to conclusions and reached decisions finally without, by some miracle, letting the statute of limitations on that process lapse, i am in the transitional phase, or more aptly, the stuck phase. i am in the middle of the week, perpetually, though the air will grow colder and the clouds will come cover everything (my thoughts included) and i will have to continue fighting through the winter, fighting the down snow off my back, away from my heart (cooling it, letting it slip into sleep), and finishing classes because i have already paid for them. i have decided to do that which i have always longed to do - all of those things most dear to my heart, including drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes in front of the word processor, its cursor blinking up at me, asking me and begging me for movement, for the fingers to decide the course of its life. i will be doing whatever it is i most want to do and i am terrified of this notion because here, way back here in october, the cold has not come and classes are far from over and i have not planted myself in my seat in my brain for the activity of writing and the novel pouring from me, my hands frigid in the air over the keystrokes - and i am terrified that i will change my mind and i will be too scared to go through with it and i will create again a million reasons not to, i will rationalize my way away from myself, my true self (whoever she is), i will walk away from the cliff's edge, citing monetary grief or the fear itself as too powerful to be held at bay by the simple gall of my actions. i must find methods for fighting fear now in all this, i must find ways of not only maintaining contentment and forward progression, but now of maintaining a fearlessness, an audacity with which to covet myself and my freedom. and the question - how do i do? how do i find courage except by doing? has anyone in all time been heralded for their bravery before an act exhibiting it? doesn't courage always come from doing the thing you thought you couldn't? isn't that what i must now do? only not now, later, months from now, after the history of india has been clarified and rococo ornamentation has been memorized and evolution has been properly analyzed and all of this tested and retested and written about by these hands aching for fiction to fill and overflow them.