Open a bakery? Montreal bagels and sour dough bread.

Maybe rye with caraway.

Overheard a guy saying that he can't do something or other. I have heard him say things like that directly to me before, but from a distance it just sounded whiney. He is stuck. I know a few guys like that. I know of myself that I can be like that also. But when I want something, I do make it happen, I just have to want it bad enough. I wanted to go to Vancouver Island. I wanted to come to Israel, I wanted to go to yeshiva, I wanted to get married.

There is still a block. I am making the same mistake over and over again. I just had a job tutoring, I got a lot out of it, but I wasn't going out of my way to get feedback from the boss. On my last day I got a lot of feedback and realized that if I had just got that same feedback all along, I would have done a better job.

There is no relying on others, when you go out into this world to get your hands dirty (by building the world in a kosher way, I mean, farmers get their hands dirty), you have to make it happen. 

There is prayer and effort.

A friend of mine is starting out in real estate. He told me this morning that he made a huge mistake last night. He had been researching three hotel/apartment buildings, one is all one bedroom apartments that sell for $75,000, and another is all studio apartments that sell for on the order of $40,000. His real estate computer program found a studio apartment for $55,000. He assumed that it was in the nicer building of one bedroom apartments, and his boss got very excited about it and even put off family time to check it out, reasoning that there must have been a mistake in the listing, it was really a one bedroom and he was going to get a very good deal. Now, of course, the truth was that it was a studio apartment going for quite a bit more than market value (and the ad had said that it was a real find, indeed).


Reality. It's tough.

I find the same thing in electrical work. The customer is always right when it comes to fulfilling their needs, but when it comes to troubleshooting they are wrong, just have to assume that they are wrong, or it will just end in tears.

Facebook, stand down. Even though they are still making fun of G+, obviously, Google is taking over the world. I don't know how the Chinese fit in there to that there equation there, here. On the one hand, there is no escape, on the other hand, they have this non-threatening feel that Microsoft and Apple lack. Except for picture sharing, that's where I draw the line, for now.

Boy, oh boy, remember when I would write with pen and paper. I have blank books still waiting to be filled. Hours upon hours of work. And I say, "all I need is a laptop, and it will all be A-Okay," but I have a laptop, and it is not, and I can still whine about the amount of money needed to cover my monthly.

Kickstarter. Hasn't been aquired by Google.

Legal affairs in Israel. This country is all so heimish, everyone is so cool and brotherly, until it comes down to legal contracts, and, of course, money. Don't let my heimishkeit stand in the way of my Goyishe kop of a legal contract. A nation like all the others. The Jews are deluded, they don't really want to be a nation like all the others. Definitely not what the Neshama wants.

Obvi.

Glee. It's been a while, but there was this Valentine's Day show that focused on six couples. One, getting married, heterosexual couple, fell apart. Two gay couples, great, just fine. One handicapped couple, great. One heterosexual couple, mixed overeager and prudish. One heterosexual couple unclear and deluded. Wow, so that is how relationships are?

I could never understand, when I was in high school, or even younger, when everyone was preoccupied with sex (and I was too, just that I wasn't doing anything about it), and even later, in University, the attitude of sex without commitment, I still don't understand it, it doesn't seem natural. It could be an outgrowth of the physical side effects of birth control pills. BCPs gave the world a whole lot of Free Love, but they really do mess with a woman's hormones (that's the idea, right?). I call BCPs Female Circumcision, Western style.

The subject of how I came to be an observant Jew comes up now and then. I rarely give the true answer. The whole world is preoccupied with sex (food is also up there). But sex as an end to itself is highly unsatisfying.  Judaism, when done properly, sanctifies the mundane, including sex. There is something higher than sex. And sex even be used to connect on a higher level.

Of course intimacy is used in the world to connect on a higher level with other people, but within the structure of Torah and Mitzvos, it can be used to connect to G-dliness. And this requires further discussion, but the point here is that Judaism was the only place where I had witnessed and experienced sanctification of the mundane.

Had a headache. Had a bad case of wanting to crawl back into bed. Had a case of needing to make a certain amount of money per month if I want my children to have food.

I need to get that writing groove back. 200-300 words per day. That is all that it will take. The internet is such a distraction. And really I should be learning Torah. But writing, blogging, whatever this is, is better than surfing. Though I could be mountain biking, or skateboarding. I need some skateboard tape for my slippery clutch pedal.

ONE NITE ONLY *SLIPPERY CLUTCH*

Why do we do the things that we do. How and when did I get beyond caring about caring about what society thinks? And is that even true, or did I come to a new understanding, while I wasn't looking. I used to be very against the whole societal pressure thing, whether it was towards wearing desert boots and jeans or towards a certain type of hat. But now, I don't feel it so much, that is the way that it is, even amongst Jews, and even amongst our more modern brethren, they also dress in their srugies and sandals, it is a uniform, just as much as a lange rekel and a samet capelutch. Fighting it only makes a person stick out, and in a more rigidly defined society like this, sticking out can have dire consequences for child rearing.

Why oh why am I such a consumer of media? I don't even consume so much media. I am a consumer in general as well, but that doesn't bother me quite as much. What I want to be is a contributor to media. I wouldn't mind growing fruits and vegetables as well, maybe some animals too. But I do know that the feeling of being published is a real high. And I only know that from school newspapers and the letters to the editor column. But even that. High.

Consuming media sucks the brains out of my head.

So take a brain. The scientists always say that if they just push a little further they will get it, the big picture will come in to focus. But, whether you want to go microscopic or explore the furthest reaches of the universe, it always comes down to a very puny human existence. Is it a further stretch to say that life sprung from the inorganic and grew and developed over countless millenia into something so complex that we can't even understand ourselves, or to develop a top down theory that there is an Infinite Creator for whom such creations are not in the least bit complex. Is it better to say that evolution surpassed the understanding of the evolved or that it is impossible for the created to understand the Creator.

Religion causes war? People cause war. Religion attempts to direct people towards an ethical lifestyle.

What the hell happened to me!? Where did I go!? Why can't I get past myself!? I worked so hard to break out of an unseen ceiling that I felt was holding me down when I didn't know anything about anything, and now that I supposedly know better, I can't move, I can't improvise, I can't live life. I second guess every move I can't make a decision, not that I was ever any good at that. I need to start writing, that is all, no more excuses, no more tomorrow, no more rusty, just start, that's all.

Pesaj, apparently is the holiday in which we celebrate the freedom from slavery, but if I do not also celebrate that fact that the Jewish people became the property of Hashem at the same time, then why should a care one iota about some dusty old anscestors who were slaves in Egypt thousands of years ago, live in the now, get over it already. But if we consider that we now belong to Hashem, who happened to free us from slavery, see, one should not forget the hand that freed us, then it begs the question further, what obligations do we continue to have as a people and as individuals to that same, never changing, Hashem.

Wired magazine ran an article  http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_brainatlas?currentPage=1  about the brain mapping project where they state a couple of times how blown away they are about the complexity of the project, the complexity of the brain, and they seem to chalk all that complexity up to evolution. Now, to say that such a complex organ of self awareness established itself through millenia of single cell development, alterations, mutations might be ok. It's funny, we, ourselves, are too small to understand our own brains. Or, to suggest that such a complex organ was created by an infinite being, for whom the complexity of the brain is simplicity, certainly has an attraction. And, if we are too small to understand this very complex creation of The Creator, how much more so are we too small to understand The Creater Himself in all of His Infinite Glory.

The scientists are very clear that they keep uncovering layer after later of complexity and that they understand that they themsleves will not be able to understand all of the data that they produce, and that they hope that in the future, someone will be able to put it all together. They also admit that  historically, scientists have worked in the dark untill someone comes along in later generations to explain what was seen earlier. What they don't quite admit is that until someone comes along, explained or not, the current science is accepted as gospel, even though this is subject to change in a couple of years.

Now that is what I like about Judaism, I mean, whether we are hear for a few million years, or, really just recorded history of 5000 years, doesn't matter too much, I personally am here about 70 or 80 years, I have an unchanging tradition from my forefathers and am passing that down to my children. I have grasped the infinite. The Jews are the only stable body in history. Even the Chinese, who have several billion on the Jews, have absolutely no issue with integration. Put a Chinaman in New York and in one generation you will have another New Yorker, that is all. But the Jew remains separate, you can't hold on to the infinite and grasp the temporal at the same time.