Reminder

I will post today, just don't have the time this very moment.  Also my neighbor's been renovating his apartment for the fifth time this year, and I just can't think through all the banging.  But don't worry.  I intend to compose a decent post.   I'm planning on addressing the issue of truth and ambiguity as I understand those concepts today, compared with how I viewed them ten years ago.  Stay tuned.  It'll hopefully be interesting.  

A Blogxistential Dilemma

So here we are.  It's 11:00 a.m. on the first day of my serious effort to maintain this blog,  to write something interesting every day for the next few months.  Or at least until I find a job.  The problem that I'm immediately faced with and discouragingly acutely aware of is that I don't know exactly which direction to take this in.  The prospect of typing aimlessly in a stream of consciousness directionless prose doesn't really spark my interest.  So I suppose that this post will be about exploring the directions and themes that I'd like to ruminate on during these next few months.  

Perhaps the easiest way to find out what I'd most like to blog about would be to reflect on which blogs I currently read.  Those would have to be a blogroll of a dozen or so which address the issue of jewish orthodoxy and the challenges and crises that it faces in today's world.  I was raised in an orthodox jewish home and although I wouldn't consider myself orthodox today, I still struggle with maintaining a balance between retaining the positive links to my roots, those experiences that helped shape and define my personality and upon which I look back on warmly, and the reality of my life which sadly recognizes that my childhood was one of religious extremism marked very strongly by elements such as racism, intolerance, psychological and sexual repression and overall narrow-mindedness.  Ugly prejudices which firmly tip the scales against my remaining fully orthodox as an adult.  

I've spent a long time battling against these tendencies and the cognitive dissonance that gnaws inside your conscience growing larger and louder the older you get.  But isn't is so cliched.  So boring and unoriginal.  The prodigal son rejects religion, tosses the mantle, relieves the yoke of god burdening his shoulders and burning his back.  The oldest story in the book.  

Do I really have anything original to say, to contribute, to distinguish my voice from among the cacophony of the religiously disillusioned.  I suspect not.  There are those who can say it better, who can think it better, and who have already done so quite well.  

Perhaps then this is for myself.  To regain that intellectual sharpness, the curiosity and drive that led me outside the boundaries of my youth.  I feel like I've become intellectually lazy.  I've forgotten the arguments and the thoughts that sustained me and when questioned can no longer justify myself, my life.  I've taken refuge in the shameful and dishonest shell of nihilism, truly an unsustainable philosophy.  

So that's it.  Where better to start than squarely at square one.  And so we'll leave off today where we'll pick up tomorrow - what exactly do I believe in at this point in my life?    

Unemployed and Overbored

Here we go again.  In the spirit of third time's the charm let's have another go at it.  I've just recently picked up Stephen King's "On Writing" and the 300 page, $15 tome of mediocrity's boiled down advice to wanna be writers would do one much the same who was looking for Carnegie Hall.  That is - practice, practice practice.  And seeing as how my my calendar is wide open for the next three months I ought to have no excuse not to.  So come along as I attempt to write every day on this - the loneliest blog on the internet - at least one hour every day.....................starting now!! ( I mean, tomorrow.)  

Late Nite Check In

Wow, haven't been back here in awhile.  Interesting that Google doesn't ever seem to erase these blogs even when they appear to have gone defunct after months of non-activity.  Hmmm.  Don't know if I think that's a good thing or not.  In this Internet age it seems nothing ever gets lost or forgotten.  I can't imagine that's a positive technological development for societies and individuals.  

Either way, I thought I'd update all my faithful readers on what's been happening lately in my oh so exciting life.  As I'm sure those of you who've been waiting with bated breath since my last posting have been dying to know, I have indeed finished a few of the books that I'd listed as "on my reading list." Others - not so much.  I tend to be the type who picks up a dozen books at a time, starts reading them all and winds up finishing just three or four.  I guess you could say I'm more of a sprinter.  

Well, in the interests of pushing forward despite my chronic unmotivation and strong inclinations to quit, I've picked up a whole new range of books that I'm sure I'll be pretty enthusiastic about reading - at least in the short term.  I went to the Yeshiva University book sale last week. I honestly don't know quite why I try to go every couple of years, other than my unflailingly optomistic attitude which convinces me that this is the year that I'll find that one magical book which will singlehandedly reestablish my flagging faith in the religion of my childhood.   But alas, twas not to be this year. 

I did however, manage to pick up a variety of titles which I'm sure once I get around to reading them will do an excellent job of clearly outlining and explaining to me, in exquisite detail, exactly how, why and when I'm going straight to apikores hell.   

Till next time - Cheers !

So I don't know how to add a feature to the blog where I can simply list and update the books that I find myself reading as I pick them up, read and finish them.  I guess I'll just list what I'm currently reading now.

1) Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL TimeWarner

2) Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography

3) Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

4) The Overcoat and Other Tales of Good and Evil

5) Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

Why dont more people support their local pbs station? Do they feel guilty like me when they watch Pink Floyd playing pulse, knowing that ordinarily that would be something that they would have paid for to see, but now, since they dont have to, since they can sit back on their couch and feel an awkward mixture of duty and apathy, with the latter just slightly besting the fight, well, they just wont. And if its gone tommorow, I'm sure something else will be on. Can't count on people's charitable will. Maybe I just subliminally really want a tote bag, whatever that is.

I find myself here again, actively trying to waste some more time, avoiding studying for evidence, or crim pro, or bioethics. All subjects which I chose to take earlier, before the semester began, and which now, I'm trying desperately, failingly to justify my disinterest in. There was an interesting articlein New York magazine this week about burnout. One of the more interesting points made was that contrary to common intuition, burnout is not mainly the effect of unrelenting work, with correspondinglyy little rest. Rather, its a function of something more abstract, an ennui born of the complete collapse of personal motivation, drive and ambition. When a person feels totally the utter worthlessness of his efforts, and himself. The article mentioned that its more prevalent in twentysomethings, then older folks since they still have the opportunity to have their dreams demoralized and ideals disillusioned, whereas old people have already been graced with those byproducts of life.

Money

I've been studying on and off now for the last couple of weeks., alternating weekly between classes. This week I'm on Evidence and CrimPro. I finished going through the crimpro materials once through last week and I'll go over them again later around Wednesday or Thursday, and I feel pretty confident for the most part about that stuff. Evidence, on the other hand, is taking me longer to run through, though the course as its being taught by the professor seems easier than some of the professors friends of mine are taking. Its difficult to find any passion for this stuff and after more than a year of this, I've pretty much given up trying.
Finals are in less than two weeks from today, and I feel pretty calm for now. Last year, at this time I was a complete wreck. Couldn't eat, or sleep, and I had a constant knot in my stomach, and the general feeling that my life was miserable and that I was doomed to complete and total failure. Things didn't turn out that way. I ended up doing pretty well first semester, better than I did second term. But I still don't know if I think that it was ultimately worth the aggravation. Second term, I wasn't as completely panicked and approached exams with a more measured attitude. I did a bit poorer than first term and that was unfortunately just enough to drop me out of my scholarship money and greatly affect my standing in the class and short term job prospects. Still, though I'm somewhat bitter, in comparing the two experiences, one marked by an near miss of a total mental, physical and emotional breakdown and the other by a more even keeled, balanced approach, I still think that presented with the choice again I'd take the latter even though that laid back attitude may have contributed to my lower grades.
The problem as I see it is that peace of mind just isnt valued enough in today's society. It gets pushed aside in the single-minded pursuit of wealth, which itself is more illusory a goal than truly attainable. And though there may be those people who understand that its ultimately a zero-sum game between wealth and happiness, most are blind to the reality that too much of an emphasis on one almost always comes at the expense of the other. I think its a function of misguided American values, which originally laid the foundation for it with the exhaltation of the so called "puritan work ethic" which emphasized the virtue in slaving away at something at the expense of all else. As if the product of one's labors is somehow worth more than the man himself.
Having been to Europe, I came away with the impression that the culture there places a higher value on quality of life than we do. And quality measured not by how much one has, but on how one uses what they've got.
I always found the expression "wasting time" somewhat perplexing. Of course time is the one thing you cant buy more of, and so it makes sense to value it. But how does it logically follow that to make the most of it, one has to do anything. What makes "accomplishment" more valuable for the time spent than not having "accomplished" anything, having just let time elapse naturally. And so you rarelyt hear about those who stop and take the time to think for awhile about what kind of life they'd like to pursue. We're simply encouraged to follow the herd. Its a simplistic picture of a complex situation, I know. But how many people do you know who give even the slightest thought to what it is that makes them happy, why so and whether their efforts in life are truly directed toward that end. Really, its well worth the time.