Choose your own ridiculously self-indulgent adventure

I've been reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and I've got to admit that at first I thought it was pretty self-indulgent. My dourness probably had a lot to do with the fact that her book hit my reading list right after Flyboys by James Bradley, in which I read about a few Japanese officers cannibalizing downed pilots at Chichi Jima in World War II, which had me contemplating Pants's impending deployment with all kinds of sublimated panic. So a post-divorce gelato binge and solo travel initially seemed a bit soft.

Plus, after a couple of pages in, I wasn't sure I wanted to be reading a book where this phrase occurs repeatedly in italics: I don't want to be married anymore. This is like having a running partner start to pipe up with "I'm tired" on mile four. Yes, of course you are-- we're distance running and I'm tired too. Shut up. But then it turned out, like it always does, that the book I'm reading right now is exactly the book I should be reading.

The emphasis on creating your own healing practices (and I'm fully aware of how New Age-y that sounds) and rules for how you talk to yourself is turning out to be really helpful, especially when it looks like the carpet-bombing of drama at work isn't going to let up anytime soon. I think what I'm trying to say is that I've been waiting for a good time to stop and take care of myself and how I see the world-- when the semester ends, when Pants's schedule of detachments eases up, when (ha!) we have more money-- and this book is calling me on my bullshit.

Reframing my own world is turning out to be easier and more pleasant than I expected. On this morning's run, instead of turning it into a four-mile slog that's supposed to magically make me competitive in my upcoming race AND give me Giselle Bundchen legs, I decided instead to notice things. I wanted to feel every bit of being outside in California on a windy morning. I choose my route for flowers and yard dogs and focused out at eye-level, maybe six feet in front of me, instead of down at my feet where I usually look because I'm afraid I'll lose hope if I see how long the next leg of the run is. I left the iPod at home, and, traitorously, the dog. Nothing was pulling me or pushing me or singing to me but my own legs and the 7:00 light and the wind. It was a small shift, but it's left me feeling remarkable fortified...