My Happy Halloween

If I haven't mentioned it on this blog yet, I have twin brothers aged 7 who are on the autistic spectrum.  Thank God they are high-functioning (and handsome) and making leaps and bounds in improvement since they started intervention at age 2.  I love them to death.  But I still become a mushball when I read about autism issues that hit home or the kindness of some people nowadays through autism awareness.  (I always loved Katy Perry but recently she outdid herself by performing onstage with an autistic little girl.  They sang Firework, a song about beating other people's expectations and releasing your inner potential. Beautiful is an understatement.  I cried.)

When I read the above picture on facebook earlier today, my heart swelled.  Aside from being a big supporter of autism awareness, I am also inspired by stories that remind you to look beneath the surface always.  Probably less than 5% of the kids who show these behaviors actually have a disability to justify it, so hearing someone take the time to defend these kids (who I feel a kinship towards) just seemed so amazingly kind. What an elevation of a pagan holiday!

Urgency is the mother of productivity

Clinic and class was canceled today because of Hurricane Sandy.  It feels great to have all this time and so much less pressure... but the two-sided coin is the story of my life.  Without the crazy pressure that I'm used to, I was so much less productive.  In retrospect it's even more disappointing because in all the hurricane downtime there was so much opportunity to get things done.

Actually I did get things done, but way too little of it was schoolwork.

One of my favorite lines ever deals with procrastination: "My room is never as clean as when I have a writing assignment due."

Ok, I know that this is supposed to be about human nature since it appeared in a psychology article... but darn!! This is me!!

The piece suggested that the best solution to procrastination is to do absolutely nothing.  As an alternative to the task that you're trying to get around, do not let yourself pick up other chores that fool you into thinking you're being productive. Yes, there's value in those chores but not when they're being used as protection from the bigger job at hand.  If you see it as a choice between 1) getting to the dreaded annotated outline for the professor who ends up grading your work when she's high 2) doing nothing.......... you probably won't last very long choosing #2 (after all, your un-productiveness will be staring you in the face) and then you'll get back on track to #1.  But if you give yourself any reason to believe that you're being productive, say organizing your knapsack or baking something for your family, you're going to find fulfillment in that and stay on that course for a while longer.  Sayonara outline (and sayonara sleep at the end of the line when there's no more time to procrastinate).

I procrastinated way too much this Sunday-Monday.  I'm not accustomed to having full days off; even a full Sunday reserved for schoolwork feels like a luxurious amount of time, between all the yomim tovim and dating these past weeks.  My schedule for school this semester leaves me with 12 hour days and then homework when I get home. Three consecutive days off like this is a dream!  Before I knew to take Frankenstorm seriously, I had crafted a great to-do list for Sunday and anticipated that a full Sunday was reasonable time to make some good progress.  But the more likely the next day's school cancellation seemed, the more I inched for new recipes instead of sticking to my schedule. Chicken stir-fry and chocolate cupcakes ensued (let myself fell straight into the trap).

For some reason, today I sensed another cancellation coming for tomorrow, and again my rigor lapsed today... I kept thinking that I'll still have tomorrow to do work (Today I read a few chapters in an infection control book. Definitely a bonus read for me, but coming at the wrong time- that's exactly how a compelling procrastinator works).  Tomorrow I really have no excuse because my paper's deadline is on Wednesday, but at this point I also have an exam on Thursday that I'd have been smarter to budget my time for.  Sigh.  But I hope you like the procrastination lesson ;)  Even if you end up procrastinating like me, you'll be aware of what you're doing and how it's feeding the process.

~And here I am writing a blog post after a 4 month break... coming up with ways to be pseudo-productive instead of staying on target~

Cyber-footprints

Having abandoned my blog for a while and then chancing upon it tonight, I was surprised at how much of my drafts' contents I had forgotten about.  Some memories brought a smile to my eyes at preserved ideas from books long consumed, and other memories made me aghast at how dramatic events of late seem to have pushed other events way back in my sense of time.

The internet never forgets.

Most people view forgetfulness as a curse (like myself, when studying anatomy and physiology, ugh!).  However, forgetfulness also plays a blessed role in overcoming grief and loss that I would be completely dysfunctional without.  With time our vivid memories of longing fade, and we are able to move on and return to happiness.  Forgetfulness is a gift that technology cannot comprehend.  The internet impedes a natural process to our detriment.  When we accidentally come across an old email, or stumble upon the facebook profile of someone with unpleasant associations, this reignites memories that natural evolution would have kept out of the way... and our collective emotional status is worse because of it.

Although having a blog makes it harder to keep past events in the past, I like how it serves as a timekeeper, documenting what was on my mind at different points throughout the year.  Memory and forgetfulness both have their place and I thank Hashem for each.

Favors... On their Terms

Been crazy busy but popping in to write about something that's been bothering me a lot. I tend to do a lot of favors for people, be it family members or friends. It's who I am. In general people know me as someone they can rely on to say yes if they need something and I'm happy that B"H I usually have the ability to jump in and help, be it with housework, schoolwork, or anything else.

But I happen to keep a pretty busy schedule of my own. I try not to complain a whole lot so people tend not to realize how much stress I'm under between grad school, dating, and family life... and sometimes they ask me for favors as if I have nothing else going on. I agree to the favor but they want it done now. If it happens to be a moment that I stopped to catch my breath from my own life- they still want their favor from me immediately and don't seem to understand the answer of "Yes, in a few". I usually try to accommodate them but sometimes as much as I want to help I just want a few minutes/hours/days to relax before I plunge into their request. Sometimes I prefer to put other favors/obligations before their favor, for whatever reason or circumstance that isn't necessarily their business. Even though I wholly acquiesce to their favor, suddenly I am evil for not catering to them immediately. I do not understand this entitlement and it bugs me tremendously. I should be entitled to have some say in how I choose to carry out their request.

For instance, a friend from undergrad is currently applying to medical school and wants me to proofread his essay. That's a big task and I already reconstructed a few other scholarship essays of his this year, one of which he won an award for. I'm happy for him. But when he sends me an essay during my finals week to proofread and then continuously reminds me that he needs me... I tell him I will look at it when finals are over. However, when finals are over- I need some time to myself before I get back to work. And on top of that, a job that was supposed to be a proofing for grammar and style has become a content face lift so that it's a good medical school essay. This upsets me. It's my vacation which is ending on Monday. My brain was squeezed dry for my own statement of purpose which took hours to think up and write that got me into a doctoral program. Now I have the responsibility to come up with another brainchild- one that gets him into medical school? This is a favor gone too far. I kindly told him that this is not my job. I can't. Perhaps some of you can relate to the grueling year of grad school applications. It's intense, but then you are able to push past and move on (and hopefully get accepted somewhere) without looking back. That was a very difficult stage in life but everyone deals with it and now it is your turn. I would barely have the strength to help my own brother and now I'm being asked for a thankless favor, on his own terms since admissions already opened and he's getting antsy about my slow pace of revisions. At the same time, I have a life. I want to help him but this time constraint is really annoying me. I don't want to say no but the terms of agreement here are way too strict for my benevolent side.

Your Wedding is Auspicious

This thought has occurred to me several times, and maybe some of you ladies can relate.

Say you're dating someone who you have hopes of going further with, and they mention that they have a wedding the following night. After the initial fomo I tend to think it auspicious. At some point throughout the wedding, your date is bound to think about themselves in their friend's place- with you at their side. My theory is that if he likes this picture in his head, marriage will be closer to the forefront of his mind than it was before, and that's in your favor.

I generally cry by chuppahs anyway, thinking about my childhood with the kallah/chosson (especially if they dealt with hardship along the way) and how far they've come + the future that lies ahead of them now- but when I'm dating someone and go to a wedding I'm that much more thoughtful. Weddings are moving and it's normal to become wistful. If we didn't have the social reinforcement of big, simcha-filled weddings, I think fewer people would want to get married so quickly. I don't mean this in a bad way because in the end they are married and building Jewish homes (ignorance is bliss in that regard), but the big beautiful weddings that we experience so regularly B"H definitely keeps it on people's minds as something of an incentive.

Sometimes one can get emotional during a wedding and caught up in the awesome dancing and hairstyles instead of focusing on graduating to the next stage in life. As the famous saying goes, נשים דעתם קלות. There's a play on words that our teachers in high school warned us about (switch the ק to a כ): All that's on a woman's mind is to become a kallah. From very young we dream of our wedding day, wedding dress and all the festivities that an engagement brings, which takes our attention away from the fact that once sheva brachos is over you're married to the person and you have to get along. You're not a sparkling kallah anymore, but an everyday wife and mother. It's so easy to take the plunge of marriage to someone when clouded by the allure of a vort and engagement ring impending. I've seen it happen so many times, especially in those circles where the chosson and kallah date once or twice and don't see each other as much during the engagement. Some of my friends have these minhagim and it seemed like they were being "bribed" by their mothers and mother in laws with all the robe and shaitel shopping during the engagement, not to mention tons of jewelry, while barely seeing their chossons. Yet they were (kept) happy. It could be that this is only my non-chassidish biased observation of their courtships and if I was brought up this way I wouldn't even think to feel disappointed about not seeing my chosson, but I definitely think that all the apartment shopping would serve to distract me away from the purpose of marriage. Anyway both women and men can fall prey to this, so we all can benefit from being mindful.

Going to a friend's wedding naturally stirs up emotions in you to want to get married. Fun times of music and dancing aside- even the love and admiration that you see between the chosson and kallah causes a productive sort of envy. It makes you want to reach that stage too, and maybe even settle down with Mr./Mrs. Good Enough to achieve those ends. Setting the stage and priming someone for marriage is a healthy facilitation, assuming the person is ready to get married and for mostly all the right reasons.

Sometimes men really need every push they can get to settle down with someone, so I think that it's a lucky occurrence if your wedding coincides with my relationship. You may not have realized it, but your wedding was a good influence and I appreciate it.

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The other side of me says that men are nowhere nearly as deep-thinking as I'd like, so a wedding might just be a passive experience through their thick heads (sorry boys, you've let me down... some of you). Do you think there is a difference in the emotions running through a single girl versus single guy at their friend's wedding?

No Appetite for The Hunger Games

I finally read the Hunger Games (Book 1) after a long semester in which the borrowed book sat under a pile of audiology textbooks. I'm generally a slow reader but everyone promised me that I wouldn't be able to put this book down. The hype on the web and among my friends was pretty high. Ok, you got me, I'm excited.


Except I finished the book, disappointed. I used to be a huge Harry Potter fan so I can appreciate a good fantasy. In fact, all the hype made me feel like this was going to be a nouveau-Harry Potter and I liked that idea.


But it didn't hold a candle to Harry Potter... and that is only the wisps of the shadow of Harry Potter that used to be my extreme fandom. Admittedly the movie does look better, so perhaps I will favor this series more once I watch it, but in the meantime here is my review.


Katniss (some of the name etymology is awesome, others are just peculiar) irritates me. I love how she is the protector of her sister and her family, because I can relate to those feelings (albeit on a much less desperate level). However the way she deals with Peeta frustrated me. He is so sweet and kind to her. How does she not realize how much he loves her? Perhaps it was the competition that made her paranoid suspecting his motives, but I think it was more a matter of her being a girl oblivious to her worth and good attributes. I suppose she is 16 so there's room for immaturity, but I see this theme on a regular basis. Amazing, pretty girls befriend guys, not realizing what they're doing to them, and when you suggest that the guy likes them they completely deny the possibility. It doesn't even dawn on them that they might be leading the male friend on. These girls need to have more self-esteem and realize that with their attributes they are desirable! It's better to anticipate this and modify the "friendship" accordingly than to wait to be surprised and uncomfortable when the guy you thought was just your friend actually wants more than that. You'll have missed the signs all along. Just stop. Acknowledge your strengths, Be careful and Consider being more guarded around guys you don't want falling for you. You definitely cannot blame a guy for liking you (if anything I blame the guys for not liking you! Yes, I'm that kind of friend).


Along the same lines of the Katniss-Peeta relationship... it was not a fulfilling romance. That was a disappointment. I have no interest in 50 Shades of Grey style but a bit more development would have been nice. Again, I keep having to remind myself that they're only 16...


Which brings me back to the question of why 20-something year olds are so enamored with this series? The mindset is not really on our level. Most of what I read involves Katniss being hungry, Katniss on the verge of dying of thirst, Katniss hunting for food and Katniss walking to/along the stream. Katniss tending to her wounds. A few pages about a cave. It seemed like too much of the same to me.


A few people have tried telling me about the symbolism and psychology behind the Hunger Games, that the games show us how the worst sides of people really shine through when they are pushed to the extreme. However, from the start the Districts were depicted as primitive. The Hunger Games comes across as a terrible punishment yes, but it did not feel like the behavior required from the tributes was so far from their ordinary lifestyles. Remember, I am talking from a perspective of having read the book alone. Most people watch the movie and then read the book with lots of imagery processing the book from top-down. I watched the trailer on youtube last night and even the scene with Katniss stepping up for Prim made me far more emotional than the book did. The book was way too cold.


There were a few constructs in this fantasy that I enjoyed a lot, such as the Tracker Jackers, the Mockingjay and my favorite- the silver parachutes. The cornucopia overflowing with supplies was a cool idea to picture. I liked how Rue's death was played out, with the flowers in her hair. I love how Katniss manages to read Haymitch's mind. The canons and pictures of the dead tributes in the sky was also an interesting ritual, but it reminds me of the Death Eaters from Harry Potter and their emblem in the sky. In fact, the whole forest/cornucopia scenario with magical qualities to manipulate the participants reminds me of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.


All in all... maybe it was the expectations that I set too high, maybe it was the stark contrast to the last book I read (Mean Little Deaf Queer, A Memoir by Terry Galloway), or maybe I've simply outgrown this genre, but books like these make me wonder why some series make it to the big screen and others do not. It seems so arbitrary. There's other fantasy/sci-fi out there that is just as good if not better, but for some reason it does not end up becoming a million-dollar franchise.


I know I'm the minority on this one, so what did you think of the Hunger Games? All opinions are welcome, but please no spoilers for the movie yet!

In Another Life

Observing the ways of those unlike us can raise several feelings. Relief. Admiration. Disgust. Envy. Being a happily religious woman I like to think I have a healthy balance of these feelings to keep me in check. Proud to be observant and respectful but separatist when it comes to certain other practices. Still though, these practices come in shades and even secular people shy away from outrageous things that don't behoove them. Atheists believe that humans have morality even without organized religion. So sometimes the practices I observe get me wondering how much of my religious behavior would adhere if I lived in some alternate universe just according to my moral compass. Needless to say, I don't think the results are as perfect as Atheists make them out to be.


A recent post of Princess Lea's, together with today's incredibly hot weather got me thinking about this hypothetical, religionless "alternate universe" and which liberties I'd take if there was no such thing as the Chosen People. Some of these liberties are taken by Jews as it is, but they are things that I personally would not do. I hope I'm not coming across as resentful because I'm not; I just muse a lot about who I am and what defines me.


1) Modesty. How modest would I be if I did not have explicit laws of tznius? It wasn't much of a struggle to put on tights this morning, despite the heat (because I believe in their worth). For some reason tights are not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of my least favorite tznius rule. For me it's the neckline. I would much prefer to wear a shirt with the buttons open midway, a low cut top, or a really sheer top. (Do I need to reiterate that I don't?) Length of skirts, length of sleeves don't irk me half as much. Sometimes I wonder though how daring I'd be fashion-wise if tznius was a non-issue, like would I dress like Nicki Minaj and Rihanna or would there still be part of me that says: NO. Haven't thought about that enough.


Over yom tov my friend and I were sitting in front of our houses shmoozing, when a red convertible pulled up and the driver emerged in a black halter bikini, wrapping herself with a huge rainbow towel. We live nowhere near the beach so I suppose she was showing up like this (with her boyfriend and 2 other friends) for some Memorial Day barbeque. I like that ease but not sure about being exposed in the wrong place at the wrong time.


2) I always dreamed of getting a tattoo, but no idea where or what shape I'd get. Professionals aren't supposed to have any in visible sight so that scratches a lot of possibilities.


3) Being promiscuous before marriage. I honestly don't think my moral compass would be strong enough to keep me "shomer." Hashkafic arguments are a different story (Do I need to state unequivocally that I am shomer?), but without religion and spirituality I don't see why being a virgin at marriage is so important.


4) Chipotle. I don't stop hearing about this Mexican Grill restaurant chain. Kashrus is a known chok so it wouldn't be on my moral compass to adhere to, yet at the same time I can't imagine being able to walk into any random eatery or bar in the city and eat. These places can be really disgusting and watching my peers dine made me realize how fortunate we are to have the whole mashgiach system in place, because we only eat within a certain network of known stores.


Along the same lines of dietary habits, I wonder what my relationship with alcohol would be. I'm not much of a drinker but I do like mixed drinks, and that's what's hardest to get in kosher. The other night my program had an end of year party in a fancy bar. They just opened a tab and told everyone to order what they want. I didn't go to this party, but I do think I'd have tried one of everything if there was no reason not to.


5) One last thing comes to mind: Zumba in Herald Square. I was once walking to the train and there was a huge dance party going on in middle of the street. It was a public zumba session that looked like a blast. Naturally I do not dance in front of men so I just watched gleefully for a few minutes. I totally would have joined if not for tznius (don't get me wrong, I'm happy that I have the self control to stick to what's right). When I mentioned it to someone later that night, they made it sound like I'd have to be the most uninhibited person in the world to consider such a thing. I guess that was his moral compass.


So what do you think of your own raw morality? Or do you think it's impossible to separate it from religion? I believe it was the Rambam who said that when walking past the nonkosher food stand, you shouldn't insist that the food is disgusting and that you cannot possibly eat it, but rather: אפשי, אלא אלוקי גזרה עלי. We're human beings who knowingly accept the burden of Torah. Our self-control and contentment with the mitzvos help us be a light unto the nations.

In my own tunnel

I took a rather long hiatus from blogging, even though I kept up with reading most of your blogs and added many more subscriptions. I initially stopped blogging for several reasons, from grad school overwork, to a self-imposed isolation from online social networking, to concerns I was having in maintaining privacy/anonymity.

But after a brief stint of commenting anonymously, I've had enough of the invisibility cloak. Even though it's fun to fling snowballs at the Slytherins without having to take responsibility for your point of view, the cloak is surprisingly difficult to keep on.

More importantly, being able to speak freely is liberating at first- but then you start publicizing faults and ridicule that you might have had the dignity to keep to yourself in the past. The freer you are to speak about something, the less need there is for cognitive reframing. Granted this can be constructive in some situations, but training yourself to think less before saying/publishing something negative is truly backward and becomes habit sooner than you know it. If the end result is mocking a person or community, you're responsible for putting that thought into the end users' minds whether or not you have a cool screen name issuing it. I was starting to hate myself for the things I even thought of saying.

Anyway, it seems like the current events and dating genres have taken over the blogosphere and I don't hear enough about anything else. These things were never my focus, so I'm happy to return in my little tunnel of random (hopefully interesting or even educational) thoughts to share now and then. The tunnel of Corti.

PS: Thank you Yedid Nefesh for the sweet nudge!