In a couple of days I’m going to finally go back to working after almost a year. Many times I had thought about this moment, before and after it had a date, but I had never anticipated this sensation of parting, as physical and strong as if I were leaving an actual place.

Unlike other people in this economic climate, I was not thrown out of the workforce. But it was not entirely my choice either**. I went to the woods half-heartedly, hoping that soon someone would call me back and I’d have an excuse to come home. I was scared by the accounts of flatness and despair of the unemployed, scared of not being able to ever come back, and of failure. But I was also relieved that I had to go, although I could not admit that until recently. I was relieved because deep down I also wished to live deliberately, but I did not dare.

When it began, I thought of this year as a lost year. Today, as I grieve having to part with it, it’s hard to find words to express how deeply this year has changed me. There were no aha moments or life lessons that I can retell and I’m not even sure *what* has changed exactly. But, somehow, after my year with Thoreau, I find more pleasure in cooking for someone I love than I ever got excelling at anything professional or academic, I can close my eyes and see in my head the shape and colors of all the different trees on the side of my street, and I have rediscovered the simple pleasures of inventing offline pastimes like lying in bed with my head at the feet-side to wonder at how different something familiar can look from an unusual perspective.

**When my husband and I decided to move to California in October last year, I knew there was a chance that I would not be able to get a job in time to apply for a 2011 H1-B visa before the 65k quota run out. That was indeed the case as I signed my contract in February 2012, and I was not allowed to work in the US or abroad until October 2012.