Work it, baby Is it possible to feel like you’re the busiest woman in the world and still have a relationship? BY CAITLIN SHETTERLY

Last weekend my friend Golda made the trek north from Brooklyn. In the true nepotism of best friendships, we had work to do together, since the lines of friendship and business seem to blur in the world of "aaahteests." In between work, she and I consumed copious amounts of red wine and ate entire paper Chinese containers of ribs from Norm’s, then salmon with goat cheese for breakfast. We indulged. We worked. We tried to sleep (as best insomniacs can do — they say Bill Clinton only slept three hours a night — okay, but was he productive all those other hours, or just a zombie like me?), she sleeping in my bed and me on the couch, talking long hours into the darkness with only the city lights dappling the floors of my apartment. Toward the end of the weekend, she turned to Cowboy and said, "So what’s it like dating the busiest woman in the world?"

I’m not sure I heard his response. Or maybe I was too afraid to listen. In the past, boyfriends of mine have not really liked my ambition level — or the fact that in some circles I might actually be considered a workaholic. One boyfriend broke up with me the day after I handed in my senior thesis claiming that I had not paid attention to him in any real or healthy way for six months. Another was always angry with me for not being done with my writing by 5 p.m. — like a balanced, hard working person would be, according to him. The thing about being an artist — or maybe it’s just me — and trying to run a theater company, an acting career, and a writing career is that I work weird hours and I work eight days a week.

I work when I want to be running or doing yoga.

I fully comprehend that when you have a regular job, it might be hard to understand why all of a sudden at 6 p.m., despite an entire day in front of the computer, your girlfriend only has one measly sentence, which she thinks sucks anyway.

But the house is really clean because she was "writing" while doing dishes and vacuuming and making meatloaf.

When I’m stumped and actively not-writing-but-writing, I always think of Nancy Franklin, who is one of my favorite writers for the New Yorker. What seems like a long time ago now, I was a fact checker there, and I remember Franklin saying that she stays up past 5 a.m. with not one sentence blinking from her screen while she freaks out because she has awful writer’s block. When my own brain freezes, I see her in my mind’s eye — her red hair tousled and standing off her pale face, her glasses, her little frame, her ironic smile. Maybe, I think, she’s awake at 4 a.m. in NYC trying to write just like me — and I don’t feel as alone as I toil late into the night with my cat as my only witness.

Cowboy’s busy, too — sometimes we have to make appointments a week out to see each other. Some weeks it’s all phone and one night of conking out exhausted in front of a movie or over the reading we both need to do. I’m on the road a lot recently with being back in school in Boston and a show I am traveling with, plus a film I’m working on. So we rely on our cell phones and notes left in the a.m., short lunch meetings at Sofia’s.

I sometimes try to imagine a life of relationship appointments: appointments for sex, appointments to snuggle, appointments to eat take-out at 10 p.m. — although look how great that worked out for Mia and Woody.

I worry that I’ll never be good relationship material. I mean — how in the hell could I have kids, too? Or maybe I’m just a baby — like this is really not all that hard, I just can’t handle it. I should just buck up. I don’t know. I do know that being a woman and being career-hungry and working your ass off is still — today — uncomfortable, like shouldn’t I be making cookies and having babies? People just assume that the most serious thing in my life is my relationship, or when single, my desire to be in a relationship. But what if the most serious thing in my life is my career? Does that make me a cold bitch?

Cowboy says it’s sexy I work this hard at this many things and he loves it. It gives him room to do his own thing, he says, and finally he’s with someone who "gets it." Some days, though, when deadlines seem to careen towards me at the unprecedented pace of what seems to be considered success, I just want to put my head down on my computer and find a way out.

Caitlin Shetterly can be reached at bramhallsquare@yahoo.com