So I have had another year around the sun, and I am 53 today. I have plans later on with Mum to celebrate, with breakfast for dinner and a carrot cake. It’s also Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of the month of Elul on the Jewish calendar, where we begin to prepare for the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Elul is a month of introspection and understanding, where we look inside ourselves for ways we can improve, and to ask forgiveness of those we may have wronged in the last year. I have been fairly lax in practice the last year or so, and I am trying to dedicate more time to religion and tradition than I have been. I struggle with being religious because it conflated badly with my particular mental illness — and strong religious feeling makes me think my medication isn’t working.
But my medication IS working, and I just have to get myself comfortable with the idea that religiosity and sanity can coexist. It’s just so easy to get lost in the details and miss the meaning the practices are supposed to stir, I can’t allow myself to relax and just experience things without second guessing them.
School has started, and things seem ok so far, but I haven’t been able to get all my books yet. I ordered them from the bookstore before the semester started, but no luck. (They have a service where you order them and they package them up for you) If I don’t get something by Monday I will have to cancel the order and buy them individually as ebooks, which I don’t like doing if I can avoid it. You generally only have access for the semester, not permanently and I just like a physical book more.
So that’s what’s up in my world — how are YOU doing?