A Proper Blogoversary Post

An interesting thing happened just around my blogoversary which is worthy to write about in this post. My parents decided to clean up my room in their house, (no this is not the interesting thing…wait for it…) where I no longer live, but still have tons of stuff, lots of it is garbage. As I was going through it all, among the stuff, I found something unbelievably amazing. I found my diary from over a decade ago, a journal that I wrote in intermittently between the ages of 10 through 13. Extremely curious as to what in the world my thoughts were at that age, I carefully opened it up and went back in time to my childhood, to when I began to discover that I like to write.

The pages were filled with what I did each day, how I felt about just about everything, and memories I had long forgotten about. One diary entry contained thoughts that were so not me at all that I don’t remember ever thinking in my life, and I burst out laughing. I sure was an interesting kid. I found myself wishing I had written more down, recorded more, especially when I got up to descriptions of my grandfather who passed away before I reached high school, or when I reached points in time where I know important events happened that I barely wrote about. I looked back at the past with very different eyes. It’s amazing how words are like time capsules that can take us back to any place and time. Writing is a great way to preserve memories, but also a great form of self-expression.

About a year and a half ago I was looking for a new hobby. Something fun to spice up my life a little, to escape from boredom, not just the kind of boredom when you have nothing to do, but the kind when your bored with what you are doing. That’s when a friend of mine suggested I start a blog. I had never really read any blogs, and didn’t know what to write about, so I started reading. I’ve often wanted to share my thoughts with the world and after enough reading I decided it could be a lot of fun and so a year ago I started this blog.

I didn’t really know what to call the blog, and I admit I don’t love this blog’s name, but it was the easiest thing I could think of. Although I always loved school because I love learning and knowledge, I always thought “real life” would begin when school was over, and I was quite anxious for that. Then I graduated, and although my tagline is that “I pretty much knew what to expect from life and then I graduated college,” that is not completely true. Like any other average person, life had thrown me my share of disappointments in the past. Facing life after college was not a big surprise, but it was a bit of a wake up call. All the sudden I had the chance to do anything I wanted, the world was mine to explore, there were so many paths I could take, and long story made short the excitement was kind of paralyzing, and not everything went quite the way I thought it would. It was like the scene from Finding Nemo when the fish have spent the entire movie trying to get out of the fish tank in the dentists office, and they finally come up with a plan that works, but there they are sitting in plastic bags in the ocean, so free yet so trapped, and they turn to each other and say, “Now what?”

I’ve learned a lot in the past year, and I have learned a lot from blogging. I have learned that sometimes when you write and release your thoughts, you let them go and allow yourself to move on, while other times recording thoughts instead causes those thoughts which you wanted to let go, to run through your mind again and again and again. I discovered that no matter how clear and obvious you think you are being people will always read things they way they choose and not the way you intended them, that once you press “post” it is out there for people to read as they like. I learned that some things are difficult to say, even if you’re anonymous.

It’s been a fun year of blogging, and I look forward to the next year going forward. Blogging would never be the same without readers, and I would like to thank all of you reading this for reading, especially those of you who have shared positive or constructive feedback through comments or email. I truly enjoy hearing from you. Thanks for reading! :)




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Writing, Thinking, Happiness

You know, I thought about starting a blog for a long time before I actually started one, and the biggest obstacle standing in my way of staring one was that I kept thinking, “but what in the world will I write about?” Ironically, I never had any problems writing and I was the kid who almost always had to shorten papers for school because they were always over the limit. Sometimes I feel I could write forever and never stop because I have so much to say. The underlying issue was really “what in the world could I write about that I could share with the entire world on the internet?” That is a somewhat harder question. So I figured I would write about things that I’ve been thinking about, situations that have arisen in my life. Once I’d come up with a few good ideas for topics, I figured it was time to jump in.

Except for the fact that the past week I kept thinking, “What are my thoughts? What am I thinking about?” and nothing seemed to come to me. After a couple months with tons of ideas to write about, I seemed to run out of ideas. Everyone hits writers block at some point, and it was hard for me to even write about why it so frustrating to be able not to write. Writing is just an extension of thinking. Which is say that you need to think in order to write. But I often find that I need to write in order to think. Sometimes my thoughts are completely disorganized and I need to put them on paper to organize them and figure out what I’m really thinking. Writing is expressing, and when I attempt to express a thought and it comes out wrong, it pushes me to dig deeper. I kept trying to write to get the juices going, but nothing was coming to me, until I starting thinking again.

Recently I’ve been thinking about happiness and what makes a person happy. Actually, I should delete the word “recently” since happiness is actually something I think about a lot. I was listening to one of the many songs on my iPod to the words: מצוה גדולה להיות בשמחה תמיד, that it is a mitzvah to be B’simcha always. (As a side note, I once saw an alternate version of this saying that I really liked: שמחה גדולה להיות במצוה תמיד- Being constantly involved in a Mitzvah brings great happiness. What an interesting twist and a great perspective). Anyway, I usually translate the phrase מצוה גדולה להיות בשמחה תמיד to mean that it is a great Mitzvah to be happy, always, but I realized that linguistically, if that was the correct translation, then it would have said: מצוה גדולה להיות שמח תמיד. Using the term “B’Simcha” instead of “Sameach” denotes not that it is a mitzvah to always be happy, but rather that it is a mitzvah to always be, as I would stay, in a state of happiness.

Being happy versus being in a state of happiness are not the same thing. I don’t think (and I think most people would agree) that it is not good to always be happy. There are times when happiness is not appropriate, such as at funerals, on somber days such as Tisha B’Av, and when others are in pain. However, constantly striving for happiness, trying to always recognize the good in the world, and trying to stay positive, is a goal that should be constant, Tamid. B’Simcha literally means “with simcha” or “in the midst of simcha.” To be always happy is not only a goal that is not desired, but it is also impossible. There will always times when you will feel upset, and being told that you shouldn’t be sad, that you should always be happy, can cause a person to feel guilty for not being happy, and perhaps cause them to try to push the negative emotions out of the way instead of trying to deal with them and work them through.

The point of מצוה גדולה להיות בשמחה תמיד is that everyone is entitled to feel negative emotions, and at times they are even required. However, it is important to place those feelings in the context of an overall picture and life of happiness. A state of happiness is a general way of life. Some have argued that it is not an ending point, but rather a journey. Maybe we can’t always be happy, but we can always strive to live a happy life.