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 !