ramblings

Birthdays, Pandemics and Courage

Two weeks ago, when life was still selfish, and we weren’t aware of our every breath, and move, and action, I gave my students a writing prompt.

The prompt was courage.

When do we need to have courage? What does courage mean? What is courage when it comes to faith? Family? Friends?

I sat down to write with them, and this is what I wrote:
Courage sometimes gets stuck in my throat as I try to find the stepping stones to lift myself up above the fear. The tears always begin to fall when I admit I’m afraid, and often these tears are the fuel for the anger I need to stand up and get things done.

My faith requires courage because the world thinks the weak are the ones who turn to
G-d.

They think that faith is a crutch, an excuse, a way to ignore life’s pain. They don’t know how strong your heart has to be, to be able to believe.

I call on courage when my faith is sitting in my hands, ripped to shreds.
I call on courage when my voice is hoarse from calling out to a G-d I know is there, but can not hear.
I call on courage on the rainy days.
I call on courage when I look into my future and don’t know how the outline will be filled.
I call on courage, and I call on faith because sometimes they are one and the same.

___________

A part of me feels strange saying that life requires courage now.I associate real courage with risking danger, with sitting on the front lines, with looking danger in the eye and doing what you have to do anyway. So, yes, I’d say that anyone who is working in the medical field right now is courageous. But the rest of us?

Those of us who are being asked to stay home? To avoid danger? To keep ourselves safe?

It doesn’t necessarily feel courageous. It feels a little stifling. Life is really uncertain, and that makes me uncomfortable. The things I can rely on to give me joy, like teaching my students, or hanging out with friends and family are no longer reliable sources of joy in my life right now.

Which means that I have to turn inward.

And turning inward requires courage.

Turning inward, and accepting what you find there, that is courageous.

_________

Tonight is my birthday.

I’ll be turning 23, but it feels all so meaningless and unimportant while the world is in absolute chaos, while I have to settle my anxiety over and over again, while people are experiencing pain, loss, confusion, and epic disruption in their lives.
But…it’s still my birthday.

It’s the anniversary of the day I started out on this planet. Which means it’s the anniversary of everything I’ve ever achieved in my life, every leap I’ve taken, every fear I’ve overcome. It’s the day in which G-d takes me in his arms and says “I want you here, there is a reason you need to be on this earth.”

What better reminder could I ask for in the midst of the most confusing global experience I’ve ever lived through?
For the last few years on my birthday, I have made a point to do random acts of kindness for others. Sometimes I’ve had my students join in. Sometimes I’ve asked all of you to join in.

This year, right now, we’re not really supposed to be around people. This makes it exponentially harder to do easy acts of kindness, like helping someone with their stroller, a smile to a stranger, even paying it forward in restaurants or coffee shops is not really possible right now.

But if there has ever been a time to reach out with kindness to others, it’s right now. So, if you can, in honor of my birthday, I ask you to reach out to even one friend or family member via FaceTime or text and make them smile. Remind them that there is goodness and happiness and laughter still readily available to us.

We don’t have to do this alone.

_________
It takes courage to turn inwards, and right now, a lot of us are being forced to turn inwards.

It’s not necessarily a comfortable place for all of us, especially when we’ve carefully arranged our lives to allow us to not have to face our innermost selves all the time. Distractions, work, friends, obligations – it’s all so easy to make it all build-up, and then because you’re so tired at the end of the day, tuning everything out by watching or reading something is so justified. And then a new day begins, and then again, and then again, and we haven’t even looked ourselves in the eye all week.

Right now, we are being handed the necessity to look ourselves in the eye, to accept ourselves, to find joy and a sense of peace within our own minds.

It’s not easy. It takes courage.

But this opportunity is ours for the taking.

And we will all be richer for it.

___________

The other day, I was briefly discussing this situation with a friend, and how overwhelmed and confused I felt by it all, and she asked if I’d be writing about it.

I responded that it feels like so many people are writing, what else could I possibly say?

She said “just your feelings.”

So here they are, my fellow humans: for those in quarantine, and for those who are social distancing, and for all those who are feeling afraid and lost.

These are my feelings.

I hope they make you feel even a little less alone in your fears, your anxiety, and your stress.

Keep the faith. We’ll be out of the dark one day.

 

–
Etti Krinsky

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Dear 12-year-old Me

It’s been ten (and a half, to be precise) years since I’ve been twelve.

I’ve been thinking about 12-year-old me a lot recently. I’m not sure why, she just keeps coming into my mind. It’s interesting, being an “adult,” because that’s all I ever wanted back then, that age when everything would just make sense.

I have good news and bad news for 12-year-old me.

The good news is, honestly, a lot of the time, it does make sense. Things just work. I get to do what I want. I’ve come a long way since 12, had a few muddled years in between, but now…I’m good. I understand what makes me tick, what makes me angry, and (roughly) how to make myself happy. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I mostly make sense to me now. When I was twelve, it was mostly murky.

The bad news is, that not all that rarely, without fail, comes a time in which nothing makes sense.

There are moments in which I’m going along with my hum-drum life, surrounded by luxuries I barely notice (and probably complain about), with friends and family on speed dial, people I know who would drop anything to be there for me if I needed it. I even have the audacity to continuously ask G-d for more.

And suddenly I’m hit with the realization that I am privileged beyond belief.

And it hurts to breathe.

And I enter a battle inside my mind – is G-d good? G-d is good to me, yet so painfully unkind to an unfathomable number of people. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around how insane the lives of people who SHARE THIS EARTH WITH ME are. Torture, heinous murder, desperate poverty, at the hands of dictators, genocides, starvation, addictive drugs, violence…it never ends.

There is an endless sea of hatred and pain, and bloody waters on this earth that I call beautiful because I’m able to look at just one tree.

But…the world…is good, right?

G-d…everything He does is for the good, right?

During these moments, I feel like I am twelve again. Confused, lost, heartbroken.

I want to just put a stick in the world’s gears, make it stop moving and moving and moving, and force it to look itself in the eye. I wish I could make a noise so loud that it will stop all of humanity in its tracks and force it to recalibrate, reconsider every action it has done until now.

I want to scream.

I don’t read the news because it hurts my soul, but who is that helping?

How can I ignore the pain?

Yet how can I listen, with hands tied?

I am so small.

This world and its millions of problems are so large.

And sometimes I feel like I’m just whispering into the void without even an echo.

I’ve seen how hard it is to effect change. What kind of back-breaking, mind-splitting labor it is. There are endless critics, people sitting, doing even less than you are, telling you how useless your activities are. Change, in its essence, is not inspiring. It is dirty and difficult, it is all-nighters and tears in your pillow, it is prayer and tiny, tiny steps.

And each of us, in our entire lives, can only barely paint one stroke in this enormous masterpiece.

But what a stroke that is.

Because there are people who go through their entire lives without ever picking up the paintbrush.

12-year-old-me…I am trying.

I am not rich. I don’t have any fancy titles. I had no fancy education.

But what I do have is a heart. The same heart that made 12-year-old, and 13-year-old, and 17-year old me cry into my pillow, and the same heart that caused all kinds of tantrums, the same heart that fiercely loves her family, loves life and loves growth.

I’m trying to be grateful. To truly notice how good I have it, how lucky I am, how full of gifts my life is.

I’m trying to notice. To notice the pain on others’ faces, to try to do something to help heal them. To reach out, to do kindnesses in the small creases of my every day, in the moments between moments.

I can’t wave a magic wand, I can’t put on a cape and save the day. This world has joy and miracles painted in with evil and hatred, and that’s the way it’s always been.

I want to tell 12-year-old me that it gets better, because it did, and it does, and it continues to. But the older I get, the more pain I come across.

I don’t know where my life is headed, I don’t know what ever comes next, what each new dawn brings, but I pray that I am gifted with the opportunities to shake some foundations and bring about the change I so desperately hope to see.

Perhaps it’s time I use my words for something more valuable.

I want to have a hand in the masterpiece.

So I’m picking up my paintbrush.

For twelve-year-old me.

And the twelve-year-old in me.

 

 

27/52

Photo by Anna Kolosyuk on Unsplash

Long Night

Thump, thump, thump. Thump, thump, thump.

I learned about anxiety this week.
Right now, I’m taking deep breaths to get through every sentence, because I’m not sure what’s going to be said here, and I’m also not sure this is me prioritizing properly. I’ve just discovered that an assignment I was about to submit was missing many, many requirements, and it means a few hours of work that I thought I didn’t have in my future this week. My eyes are already closing because I slept badly last night. It was one of those nights in which it feels like you’re constantly looking at your phone to see the time, and somehow time is passing but it’s also going so slowly.
I put caffeinated coffee in my cup this morning, something I don’t usually do, because I’m reckless and I drink coffee for the flavor, not for the buzz, because man, do I buzz when I drink caffeine. But I drank it, because I could barely lift my head up from my pillow this morning.
Anyway, that caffeine has long left my veins, and my eyes are shutting, and I need, need, need to work on that assignment, but I also need to write a blog post, and I’m not sure that this is what I should be doing, but here I am, with my heart going thump, thump, thump, my stomach churning a little because I’m honestly not sure this assignment is going to get a good grade anymore, and my grades are really important to me. They never were, not in high school. I didn’t really care much for grades ever, but now, when every dollar is going towards this education, I feel this unending duty to learn the material more than I have ever learned anything before, to sear it to my brain, to do really well in every class.
I’m not going to waste this opportunity.
And I guess this pit of anxiety in my stomach, that I’m ignoring with all my heart, is begging me to re-prioritize, to STOP WRITING A BLOG POST and get to work on this assignment. It’ll never go anywhere but my professors grade book, but it’s about mental health, so it’s important. It’s teaching me things that are going to help me in ten years when I’m faced with a client.
Right?
This is all worth it?
This weekly pulse racing, panic, race to the finish line as I close my laptop before Shabbat begins, hoping and praying I didn’t miss anything, that I read every line I was meant to, that I thought the right thoughts.
Being in school is a privilege, one I don’t take lightly, but it’s also so very contradictory to what my real life is. I’ve been teaching writing for three years, and to be totally honest, I’ve been doing that by trial and error. I’ve made mistakes while teaching and those are some of my worst moments. But I always learn from them, and I get back up stronger, and those lessons become a part of me, and I rarely make the same mistake twice.
School makes me slow it all down in a different way. It asks me to think more, to prepare in a way that I’ve never prepared for anything in my life so that I don’t make mistakes. And it’s hard. I’d much rather learn by experience, to jump into the deep end, and somehow come out kicking. But for my specific line of work, that isn’t a possibility, and to be able to heal other peoples hearts, I need to be as prepared, and educated, as I possibly could be.
So I know, that’s why I’m here, that’s why my heart is thump, thump, thumping, because I’ve never cared more about school than I do right now. And although I know I’ll complete the assignments before the weekend is up, because I always do, it doesn’t calm my nerves. In fact, I’m pretty sure all that nervous energy is what brings me to the finish line, each and every week.
And now, just like that, I’ve written a blog post.
It’s not all that great, but for this week, we’re going to suffice with just okay, because I’ve got a whole lot more words to write tonight before I call it quits.
23/52.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Bare Feet

What is it about an airport,

that everyone’s soul shines through?

I see it through the little holes in their socks,

and their bare feet at security.

Who doesn’t think to wear socks on airport day?

I see it through their sweet voices,

explaining to their five-year-old,

why must we go through this security line –

“to check if anyone has snakes or spiders in their bags, dear”

I can see a world in which that is why we must all bare our feet

for TSA to peek through our shoes

and find our secrets.

I can see the soul in the woman whom I’m begging

to switch my middle seat to an aisle seat,

I see her long day, her long future,

I’m tired, but so is she, and I am not the first, nor the last, to beg her for something that is not in her control.

I see the soul in the man who sits beside me,

who talks about the old days

when corporate airlines didn’t charge for hot meals

and headphones.

I smile at him and I reach out to buy some headphones because I’m not doing this middle seat flight solo. 

What is it about airports?

They say airports are a no-mans-land, no country can claim it, and perhaps that’s what it is.

None of us are home, yet none of us are lost, we are all in between the beginning and end of a journey.

And we’re in our socks.

For some of us, it’s bare feet.

And we all hope there are no snakes in someone else’s bag.

 

 

19/52.

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

Hold On

Time.

The tick, tick, tick of the clock, the passing pages of the calendar, the “what? it’s June again?”
As a small kid, time was endless. Days were long, weeks were even longer, and when I was waiting for something, it almost seemed as if the minute hand on the clock had frozen.
I guess as years go by, time picks up speed. All of a sudden, you’re constantly looking backward, trying to find the days that slipped through the cracks, that flew past you as you were tying your shoe, or taking a breath, or blinking.
As a (very) young adult, I’ve been caught by surprise by how time has picked up its pace, bringing new seasons faster and faster.
What?
It’s June again?
Just last year, I was packing my things, ready to leave the city for the summer, looking forward to the laid-back New Hampshire life, but knowing I’d be missing the anything-can-happen-at-any-moment lifestyle I’ve come to love in NYC.
Here I am, again, with the very same feelings and the very same thoughts. I already feel the sand slipping through the hour-glass, as June speeds ahead, knowing that the very first day of September will be here before I can possibly swim enough, laugh enough, travel enough, study enough. I’ll be starting another year of college, that much closer to a goal that I was so far from this time last year.
Time runs, and the best thing you can do is put things in your life because time will pass no matter what, whether you’re doing nothing or whether you’re doing everything.
Time. Speeds. By.
It feels bewildering and startling, frustrating and exhilarating.
Because when will I be suddenly finding myself living the life I’m striving for, looking back fondly at the days that I spent dreaming?
Will I realize that I’m living it, or will I always be seeking more?
How does one remind themselves on the bad days that time goes by, and as it does, it heals the tiny wounds and the large wounds and brings new gifts and surprises?
The story of life is always consistently being written, there’s no such thing as pausing, or putting your foot on the brakes, or holding up your hands to yell stop, even when it’s all you want to do.
Time often brings us to roadblocks that loom large, cracks in the road we aren’t sure we can leap over, it’s speed sometimes causes us to trip over our own feet.
But time also brings us to shores we never intended to see, unearths spectacular gifts we never knew we had, swoops us up in its arms when we most need to fly the coop and flies us towards a brighter future.
Time.
It is June again.

Next June will be here before I know it, and I’ll be marveling again, and all I pray is that come each June, I have the joy of marveling at how much beauty, how much good, how much growth traveled the days with me.

14/52.

Photo by Adrien King on Unsplash

Some Weeks

Some weeks are for looking inward,

For disappearing into the pages in a book,
For dancing like nobody is watching,
For long walks with friends,
For hard-work-project-deadlines,
For cooking with family,
For laughing with tears in your eyes,
For bus rides you thought you’d write on,
For real tears that bubble up from a tired soul,
For talking with your 4 year old nephew about how bodies work,
For weird dreams that make you think,
For nostalgia and hope,
For forgetting to write a blog post but writing one just as the week ends,
Once again.
13/52.

22 Years of Sharing

Twenty-two years ago, a little girl was born in a hospital in a small state, the air frosty, the wind blowing, a blizzard heading their way.

I was whisked home from the hospital the next day, as the first flurries fell of what would become a three-foot springtime storm, coined the April Fools Blizzard, perhaps most fondly remembered by my mother, with a brand new baby and five additional children home from school to welcome her.

This was how I entered the world, and it’s a story I tell proudly, for absolutely no conceivable reason.

Twenty-two years.

That’s how long I’ve been hanging around on this planet, scraping my knees, putting Band-Aids on, exploring my world and hiding under my blanket.

Having been born just a couple of years before Y2K, my life has been pretty centralized around the internet and the emergence of technology. I didn’t get my first iPhone until I was 16, but computers were a big part of my life since my young childhood days, filled with watching my bigger siblings play games and then morphing into the big sibling that got to play the games, but with a much smaller, less attentive audience.

I made my first Gmail account in August of 2006, promptly shooting off an email to my entire family announcing my brand new form of contacting them, and over the next few years, contact them I did.

With tears of laughter streaming down our faces, my sisters and I dug deep into our Gmail archives the other day, reading my diary-like emails sent to everyone and anyone who would listen.

At one point, I chanced upon a recording, something I sent out weekly (I only followed through for approximately two weeks), coined “Etti’s Update.” An early form of today’s popular podcasts, I would record myself discussing current events in my daily life, and sent it out to classmates and family. I listened to it, just the other day, laughing at what an over-sharer I was as a kid, before I realized – oh my gosh, I haven’t changed.

From my earliest days, I have been a sharer, seeking connection, reaching out in whatever form I could find.

A few years ago, I decided I wanted to change how I celebrated my birthday a little bit by doing tiny acts of kindness for others. Paying it forward at a Starbucks, leaving a post-it note with some cash at an MTA machine, or just simply leaving an encouraging note somewhere I knew people would need to see it. It’s so easy to become unhappy on your birthday, looking at the marking of time as a reminder at how little you’ve progressed, or how quickly the years are going by. Changing the perspective has reminded me that a birthday is simply a reminder that I am lucky to be alive in this world for another year, and I have further opportunity to bring joy to others.

As a spiritual person, I do use this day to look inwards, to give extra attention to the important things, to use it as a time to reflect on the year past, and make stronger resolutions and goals for the year ahead.

I’m obviously thrilled to accept the sweet gifts and lovely messages from my friends and family.

Yet, like I previously said on this blog, the key to my happiness is remembering that it doesn’t end with me.

Reaching outward, just like my emails from my childhood show that I have always naturally done, is what brings this day to its completion.

Remembering that we live in this great big world, filled with humans that are more similar to us than different, a world ripe with the opportunity for connection, for smiles, for kind words shared – this is how I like to celebrate being alive.

Remembering that no matter what language we speak, what country we were born in, what food we prefer, we all know what loneliness is, what love is, we all have dreams and aspirations, we all can recognize a smile and an open heart.

So, in honor of my twenty-two years, I’ll be working on giving back towards twenty-two people, in whichever way I can, if that just means listening to someone for another moment, or helping someone with their stroller, or smiling at a stranger, or sending a heartfelt message to a friend.

Twenty-two years ago, I joined the mass of humanity on this earth, and I’ve spent nearly every day since talking and letting my voice be heard.

I don’t intend on quieting down any time soon, but I hope to channel all that sharing and be able to continue using this blog as a way to connect with all those who read.

I think 8-year-old me would be pretty darn proud.

4/52

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

I Have No Words.

Sometimes,
Writing is an escape,
A place to feel at home.
Sometimes,
Writing is a way to build,
Stories and poems,
Worlds that may not exist.
Sometimes,
Writing is communication,
A way to express
What is clogging my heart.
Sometimes –
Writing can take a moment,
A deep breath,
A bit of time off.
Writing can step back,
Have to be woken from its slumber,
When I must write.
But this week
I’ve been living,
Reading,
Loving.
Sometimes…
I don’t need words.
And words don’t need me.
But I made a promise.
52 weeks.
Whether words and I
Are together
Or taking a break.
So here.
Here are my words.
Sometimes,
it’s important to live
To be able to have
What to write.
Sometimes
Words must sit inside my heart
Before I can allow them to live
On paper.

 

Blog Post: 29/52

Featured Photo by Jelleke Vantoogeghm via Unsplash.

I’m No Slave

This week in my class, I discussed slavery. Well, I asked my students to discuss it. Real slavery, not metaphoric slavery. What does it mean to be someone that is held against their will, abused and forced to do something everyday that they are not receiving  wages or benefits for. I asked them to each write something that depicts slavery in an honest way, that forces them to think about it is as a real experience that real humans struggled through. We talked about how in our heads slavery is a thing of the past, but slavery is still happening today, in 2018.

The specific reason I brought this discussion to my class is because Passover is next week, and it is a time that we spend celebrating our freedom, but more in theory than in practice. I wanted my students to take a moment and realize – woah. I’m not a slave.

We discussed. We wrote. Some more than others. The realization was had, I hope, by everyone.

I managed to be able to write my own poem during this class, and it’s been awhile since I’ve had the chance to do the same assignment I’ve assigned. But I thought about it. And I realized that I am no slave, metaphoric or not. I am the one who holds myself back – I hold my own key.

This poem is not my best, it was written hastily and mid-thought. But perhaps it will spur more of you to have the same discussion we had in class, because it’s a conversation worth having.

 

My legs are not in shackles,
My hours are my own.

No whips are taut above me,
No gates keep me contained.

Freedom of speech is granted,
Freedom of growth allowed.

I am not a slave in Egypt,
I am not a slave at all.

They say it is our prison,
They say we must break free.

Do I feel as if I’m broken,
Have I secured my fate?

Have I hidden my own key
Or am I truly free?

 

Blog Post: 27/52

Featured Photo by Evan Kirby via Unsplash

The Background

On September 11th, 2017 I decided to write a blog post every week.

It’s been 26 weeks since, and I haven’t yet missed a week. Halfway – and going strong.
I’ve really liked some of them. Whether it felt like I was finally expressing a deep truth I’ve wanted to express for a long time, or whether those who read it reached out in a variety of ways to let me know what it meant to them, some of my blog posts had a real impact on me.
Some of them kind of floated by. There were a couple of weeks I toyed with the idea of skipping it, because why write when you don’t feel it? Why write when there is nothing to write about? Is putting my random words out there more important than putting something of quality out there?
But at the end of each week, my commitment won out. I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to commitments – once I make em, I can’t break em. I get a thrill out of keeping to them. That part of my personality has it’s pro’s and con’s but that’s not what this is about.
That’s really just to explain why even if all my posts haven’t been of the greatest quality, I’ve still been sharing them.
This week, I closed up a short story unit with my students.
We’ve been working on it for a long time because, in comparison to poetry, flaws in short stories shout a lot louder. It’s much harder to know when you are done, it’s much harder to fall in love with a story you crafted because you’re never sure if you did enough.
And my students were feeling that pressure. I could tell.
But this week, I looked at them and told them this week it was going to happen. They were going to finish their short stories.
As I write this, I’m waiting for the last few to submit them.
But so far, I couldn’t be more proud.
Writing a blog post every week has pushed me. It made me realize how similar my posts were. It pushed me to try my best to spice it up a little. That led me to write 3 short stories in the span of 6 months.
I had written about 3 short stories in my entire life before this October.
Recently I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and bare with me because this post is a little bit of everything, a little bit of everywhere.
I’ve been thinking about growth – which you know from my last post.
I’ve been thinking about risks. Pushing limits. Trying new things. Allowing yourself to be who you are, truly, deeply and authentically. The kind of be yourself that shakes you and wakes you up and reminds you that you are meant for more, that you can be doing things that you never thought possible – as long as you reach inside of yourself and use the tools you’ve been given. I’ve been thinking about owning up to yourself, looking yourself in the eye.
I’ve been thinking about what I want out of this life, and how quickly the days are going by, and how until G-d slowly moves the puzzle pieces of my life into the picture I want, I have multitudes of blessings to work with. But I’ve also been thinking that I don’t have to be content with that – I can stomp my feet and ask for more, as long as all the while, I am thanking Him for what He’s given me.
I’ve always been a bit of a paradox. I’ve lived much of my life fearful of others thoughts and others minds, and the fact that I can’t see inside them.
Yet, I’ve also lived in an almost fearless way of not being afraid of telling others what I feel. Of reaching out, of putting myself in the deepest, most vulnerable spaces for the sake of something so much bigger and better.
I’ve been thinking about perfection. I’ve been thinking about how much I wish my writing was perfect, that I was perfect. Often, I find myself admiring other’s wonderful qualities and wishing for them – before I remind myself that just like dying my hair red, someone else’s best quality would sit oddly on me. And that life is not about being like others, it’s about being there for others in the best way we can be.
I’ve been thinking about my future, because I never stop thinking about my future, and how I spend each day looking for the rest of the characters to walk in at any moment.
I’ve been thinking about how I chopped my hair off, and in some twisted way, my hair knew that I needed something drastic to change before my heart truly admitted it.
I’ve been thinking about 21, and what it means, and how much it doesn’t mean.
I’ve been thinking about all of these things.
I’ve been reading my student’s stories and realizing that doing something that scares you is the deepest reward you can give yourself.
I’ve done things that scare me, and sometimes the result is obvious, the gain is immense.
Sometimes you do things that scare you, and the result is not obvious, and you can barely see any change, any gain.
But I’m realizing that every moment, every thought, every word, every day, despite how meaningless they often seem, are so so full of impact, so so full of development.
And as I make my small plans down here, G-d is shifting the big things up there.
And as I scheme and develop what I feel are big things down here, G-d is moving timelines and space to make my dreams come true.
I’ve written 26 blog posts since September.
Some of them, I could feel the words rush through me, their purpose clear.
Some of them I posted with some shame, some feeling of letting someone down, perhaps me most of all.
But I don’t think any of them were useless.
For they proved to me, if nothing else, that I can do it.
That it’s sometimes not about perfection, it’s not about being inspiring, or funny, or insightful, or writing the best post ever.
My students may not have all fallen in love with their short stories – but they wrote them, and you know what?
For me, for today, that’s what counts.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m trying to remind myself that I only see one tiny sliver of the picture. And I know that in the deep part of my heart, but it’s much less accepted in the forefront of my brain. So when my blog post seems like it’s missing something – yet I post it anyway, and I make plans, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to follow them through, or I pray, and pray, and pray, yet it seems like I’m praying to a closed door – I am trying to remember that this is not everything. I don’t know everything. I never will.
And as I feel guilty for wanting more from life when I have so, so much, I am reminded that I don’t even know how much more I could have, and while it is foolish to feel ungrateful, it is useless to feel guilty.
And as I discover the impact of one moment months later I am reminded that I never know the background story of what is happening around me, and I am reminded that as I pray for G-d to write my story…

He is writing as fast as He can.

Blog Post: 26/52

Featured Photo courtesy of a birthday gift from a very thoughtful friend.