How do I keep repentance from slipping away

I keep waking at 3 a.m. with the same little panic. Last year, on a crowded Hamra service bus, I finally cried out a real tawbah, and wrote the word "start" in a battered reporter's notebook. For months I felt new, like a story with a hopeful lede. Then deadlines, city noise, old habits. I used to write other people's second chances for a living, now I am asking how to live one. I want change that lasts, not a nice line in a piece. How do you hold on to a new heart when life gets busy again?