Right now:

There is a Julia Roberts marathon on USA.

I’m reading the BlogHer ’10 tweets and wondering about these girls.

A pile of bank papers on my coffee table is staring at me.

My cat is desperately trying to meld her body with mine.

I can’t organize my thoughts well enough to write more than a list.

But I’m trying.

Last summer I wrote a post about Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, a book that has stuck with me ever since. The eating part I’ve got down pat; it’s the other stuff I – and undoubtedly every other woman who’s read that book – am working on. I forget though. Do you ever find yourself starting those good habits like exercising and eating right and calling your mother every Sunday and then find that two weeks have passed and you missed that one day and then that other day and then all good intentions are no more? You’re not alone. Or maybe I’m the only one. Who gives a shit, really…the important thing is that the praying and the loving are far more essential to getting down to the root of what ails me.

I am failing at my business. Oh, I have customers, and I have people who buy things from me and who plan to get gifts for birthdays and graduations and so forth. But in the grand scheme of things, like THE BUDGET, I’m failing. I am not a good record-keeper, I am a terrible mathematician and I have no head for business. I love the work itself, but I hate the business and the voices in my head were right: this probably wasn’t a good idea. There’s no one to rely on – or blame – but me, and it’s far easier to give up than try to fix a mess. It makes me feel awful though, and I fear that the awfulness will get the better of me.

Additionally, that gentle, relaxed feeling I had leftover from vacation is gone and the tension of real life has crept back into my shoulders like stubborn ivy, winding its way up my neck and down my spine and choking the life out of my head. There is intense fear and anxiety about the expectations I have for myself. I did not register for school. I am terrified to teach this semester. I am ashamed that I am not a better housekeeper or wife and that I have failed at my business venture.

I have educated myself enough about my anxiety to know that there are definable triggers and that there are steps I can take to head off the avalanche that comes so easily. I can meditate, I can reduce distractions, I can focus myself and my thoughts, BLAH BLAH BLAH. Just like the business, it’s easier to give up than to fix a mess. I take my medication, most of the time, but there is work I know I should do right along with that. Is it that I’m lazy? Is it too much to tackle at once? Do I forget? I don’t have the answers.

Praying and loving are these two huge words – these touchy feely warm fuzzy words that are repulsive and comforting at the same time. Praying for some people involves a church or mosque or synagogue; for other people, it’s just a quiet moment that is private and personal. I don’t know what it is for me. I forget how to do it, mostly because I think I’m doing it wrong or that God is sitting there (up there? out there?) shaking his head at me and adding my name to that list of people who got left in the oven too long. So I just skip right over it because really, what would I pray about anyway?

Loving, for me, comes back to that whole thing about being an asshole. I know that I shouldn’t be an asshole and that I should love other people, but I don’t know that I’m aware of how to do that. I could write a whole other list of shortcomings right here that would take up 14 hours of my time, and all of it involves being self-centered and too afraid to tell people I love them because they might not say it back. How do you know you love someone or something to begin with? I don’t mean romantic love – I have BB and I put a ring on his finger and so he’s contractually required to love me until I do something to piss him off. And vice versa. I’m talking about the other kind of love – the kind that (I think) is what you reserve for friends and ideas and yourself.

I really don’t know what I’m talking about here other than to say that life has confounded me in such a way that I feel as though I’m at a 4-way stop sign with no directions. It does that to everyone, I totally know that, but what happens to you isn’t nearly as important as what happens to me. See? I’m an asshole.

Finally, before Pretty Woman ends and I strangle the fur off my cat, I should say that two weeks ago I had a conversation with one of my best friends about traveling abroad for a period of time. Neither one of us knows how we will finance it or where exactly we’ll go, or what we’ll do when we get there, but we have good intentions. If it happens, it will be a lesson in selflessness and compassion, both of which I desperately need. If you’re the praying sort, send us your good wishes so that we might focus and develop this. If you’re the loving sort, send us your love because we probably need that too.