Breathe. Hold. Push. Shlomo's Birth Story

Guest post from the amazing and beautiful Estee Berkowitz

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A while back Zalmy’s friend documented his wife’s birth of their son. At first I thought it was weird (I tried to imagine being in her shoes, having her husband snap away during painful contractions seemed annoying). But then I saw the post on his website and thought it was absolutely beautiful, like tears in my eyes beautiful, and asked Zalmy to do that for our next baby.

And so he did. With film developing and processing and all, it took over a year for me to finally see the photos (besides for the polaroids… no they’re not extinct). I didn’t mind the wait, shooting film and waiting a while to see the results has become second nature for me in this instant-everything world, and besides the fact that there are rolls of film, cameras, prints, polaroids, light meters lying all over the house, I’m grateful to wait. Capturing moments and wondering how they will come out and then forgetting about them and then a few months later actually seeing them is very rewarding. Anyway, I was kind of curious what the birth photos looked like, and what emotions they would conjure up for me.

For a stay-at-home-homeschooling-mom, I think social media is a great thing. I’m able to keep in touch with so many people from my past and present, somewhat keeping up with their lives, without having to go out to coffee with them. And people can see how my life is going and actually have a visual of my crazy family-unschooling-sourdoughing-Torah-observant-life. But it also makes me quite nervous, and this is the part of me that I’m pretty insecure about. I think people see my photos of my family and my life and get this image of what it’s like and it’s really not like that at all. And not just for me, I think it’s one of the biggest problems with social media. We only show a fraction, a glimpse of what our lives are like on the internet, (okay, maybe besides us and our naked or underwear modeling children) and yet who we really are, what’s really going on in our lives and in our hearts is left in a black cloud of unknown, undocumented air of silence. The parts of us that we wish we could share and the parts of us that are screaming for attention, but the parts that we hide underneath an everything-is-okay-smile.

Shlomo was probably the best thing that happened to me that year. And seeing these photos reminded me of that. It was a year I put up with a lot of flack for homeschooling and was constantly explaining why and what we were doing. A year I put up with a lot of criticism and pain from people who made me feel like a bug that needs to be squashed. A death of a loved one and an illness diagnosis of a family member that I’m still in denial about. A time that I felt so unbelievably lonely in my thoughts and feelings.

During Shlomo’s pregnancy I got a double ear infection that kept me bed ridden for over a month. I never had an ear infection in my life. After two rounds of antibiotics that didn’t work (and anyone who knows me knows I don’t do antibiotics)… a bunch of holistic stuff and almost a whole bottle of tylenol (okay, kick me out of the crunchy mom group) with the guidance of a wonderful friend I went to a chiropractor that does applied kineseology and got me on the right track to healing.

Mari, this above mentioned wonderful friend, also told me to connect to G-d. If I came to her with a complaint she told me talk to G-d about it. Here am this kosher keeping, sabbath keeping, Torah law following religious Jew and I needed to be punched in the chest, or in this case, my ears, to really truly connect with G-d. She told me that G-d has isolated me during the ear infection, it was time to really connect and pour my heart out to Him. And so heart pouring out, I did.

On our walks to shul I noticed there was a tomato plant growing in a crack of the concrete road. Every week, this tomato plant grew and my kids and I watched little green tomatoes form into orange and then red tomatoes. This tomato plant came out of nowhere; no one would plant a seed in a concrete road, let alone water it. But grow it did, against all odds, from the harsh concrete, life! I’m not so good at explaining analogies, but I guess i’m trying to say that from all that physical and emotional pain came a wonderful relationship with my Creator.

A few weeks before my due date my good friend Robin (who I love and miss) connected me with her friend Kat who was studying to be a doula and offered to be my doula for my birth. I was honored she’d want to help me, and she was honored to assist the birth of this mama’s fifth baby. She was wonderful and just like that tomato plant in the concrete, came completely out of nowhere. She helped me birth exactly the way I wanted to. When it came time to push the baby out (sorry if that’s too much information), there was this huge barrier and I couldn’t do it, my body was ready but my mind was crying I can’t. I shifted my position, took a deep breath and said in my mind: G-d, You do this. Out came another boy (against Chanaleh’s wishes, although don’t worry, he is still her little doll). And just like his name, this little boy has been nothing but a sweet, peaceful, and delightful little addition to our crew.

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And a few polaroids.

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Berkowitzs. Film. 2013-14. Holy Moly.

STOP. Get up. Stretch. Get a Coffee (or a beer, depending on when you happen upon this post). Come back. This is a loooooong one. It’s worth it though.

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Due to a series of events, neither fortunate nor un, the year two thousand and thirteen went by without a blip on the blog-radar. According to rule S4L616 every photo-related site MUST have a year-end review, unless certain waivers were submitted, or with a signed note from ones parents.

Such events are beyond the scope of this post, so you must feel satisfied knowing that such reasons exist.

So here are my favorite photos of my family, from 2013 and 2014, in no particular order. Enjoy!

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It’s scary. Seeing all these images, knowing that all this (and more) must have happened at some point in the last two years. I mean thank G-d it’s wonderful, and I’m happy. With my family, my life, but I just wish things would slow down a bit. All this life doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There is always work that I’m in middle of, haven’t started yet, or am just finished. There are dishes to wash, repairs to be done, food to be made, grains to soak, filters to clean. As hard as it is to cram all of the to-do list in one day, on top of that there are a gaggle of kids living life. Crying, laughing, getting muddy, building ladders and forts and swords. Learning stuff, destroying stuff. Growing, maturing, faltering. And so badly do I want to remember all that. Sometimes I do. Most of the time I don’t. All the memories join their brethren, blurring together in some hairy homogenous mass of fuzziness.

Unless I document them.

Then I, like Professor Dumbledore and his Pensieve , can reach down and pluck out a memory, as clear as if it were just deposited.

And that’s why I run around with my cameras, frantically making images. I’m scared of the memories slowly fading away, melting in the grayness of my mind.

Because I think it’s funny, weird, odd, and a bit scary how many cameras I go through, I’ll list all of the gearI’ve used for these photos:

Nikon F3, F4, F100. 20mm, 28mm f/2, 28mm f/2.8, Sigma 50mm f/1.4, Zeiss 50mm f/1.4

Leica M2, M3, Zeiss Ikon, Hexar RF. Voigtlander 28mm f/2, 35mm f/1.2, Leica 50mm f/2

Hasselblad Xpan, 45mm

Mamiya C330, 80mm

Rolleiflex 6003, 6008, Zeiss 50mm f/4, Zeiss 80mm f/2.8

Pentax 67, 105mm f/2.4

Hasselblad 500 c/m, 201f, 50mm 2.8, 60mm f/3.5, 110mm f/2

Mamiya 6, 50mm, 75mm, 150mm

Mamiya RZ67, 65mm L/A, 110mm f/2.8

Rolleiflex SL66, 50mm, 80mm, Schneider 12.5cm f/2

Speed Graphic

Polaroid Land Cameras

Ricoh Gr1V, Olympus Stylus Epic, other random point and shoots.

Films used. Oh man. Kodak TriX, PlusX, gold 200, 400, portra 160, 400, 800, 160NC, 400NC, 160VC, 400VC, 400UC. Fuji 160s 400h, 800z, fp100c, fp3000b. Ilford HP5, Delta 400, Delta 3200

And that’s that.

Filters, Eating Torah, and WE'RE MOVING TO BERKELEY!!

Warning!! Wordy and Righteous (and gnarly of course). For the word adverse just skip to the last two parts. Peace.

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Sometimes I think. Recently such thinking has led me to some retrospectively obvious conclusions, though until such retrospection was retrospected it all seemed quite revolutionary (to me).

Everything we see, hear, feel, or experience, before settling calmly on some remote corner of our cortex, goes through a complex series of filters, scramblers, and descramblers. We have a view of the world, of religion, of politics, of reality, that decides what should be processed as truth, what should be looked at cynically, and what should be tossed out as complete rubbish. It tells us is which news reports should be respected and which should be ignored. Which statistics should be accepted and which should be viewed as correlation. Which facts are facts and which are propaganda. What to automatically share and what to fact-check. Who by fire and who by water. All, unless we make ourselves aware of it, happens subconsciously (I almost thought I'd spell that right the first time.), in the frontal "I'm heavily biased" lobe. Or somewhere else. I never really understood the whole breakup of the brain.

What prompted such superficially deep ponderation was a slew of police brutality videos coming up in my Facebook newsfeed, culminating in this Michael Brown story, and the resultant protests (and self-righteous posturing).

We all have assumptions about the “way things are”. Some people think there is a huge racism problem in this country. Some think there isn’t. Some think police brutality is common. Some think it isn’t. It’s hard to know, in a country of over 313 million people how common certain things are. So some jump to the conclusion that the stories as a small sampling of an overarching problem, while others insist it’s just a rare occurrence. Some jump to the police’s side assuming guilt, some jump to the other side, assuming innocence. And this is how we react to most things that come across our path.

Of course there is absolute truth, and an accurate assessment of what happened and what happens, but for one to come to the correct version of “what is” one has to somehow let go of all assumptions, ALL, and search for truth. And this has to be done on a personal level. The “presenters of facts and of what is” on all sides have their own presumptions and views, not to mention the sad preponderance of agendas and purposeful misleading that is what passes for most media outlets.

The point is that we have a world inside our head, and a world outside our head, and, unless we fight it, our filters make the world outside look very much to us like the world inside.

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V'Sorascha B'Soch Mei'ai Psalms 40:9 "...and (to have) your law (Torah) within my innards (stomach)."

The Torah is compared to bread (sourdough of course). About the learning of Torah it is explained in Tanya (the seminal book on Chabad Chassidus) that “… this is a most wonderful unity (with G-d); in the physical realm there in no unity similar or parallel to it.”

There is the world as we see it, and there's the world the way G-d sees it, the truth of it if you will. The reality of this world is G-d, and through the Torah he allowed us to share his perspective of “what is”. Through learning the Torah, really learning it. Through striving to understand it as it is, and not as we want it to be, through metaphorically chewing and digesting it, just as bread, after eaten and digested becomes part of our physical body, the Torah becomes our filters through which we understand and perceive the world become G-dly filters, and we start to see it as G-d does (as much as is humanly possible). (That was a long sentence. Just pointing it out.)

It's like watching a 3d movie without those funky glasses. Everything looks weird and we start to wonder what kind of acid trip the directors were on and how could we get some (okay maybe not the last part). Then you decide to finally slap on those funky looking glasses, and "woah!!" it all makes sense.

There’s a story about the Lubavitcher Rebbe, which I’m going to to completely butcher, as I only half-heard it once, but the gist is there.

<<insert interesting and probably pertinent preamble>>

…as the Rebbe instructed he had a Torah scroll written (a long, complicated, and expensive process) for his local Chabad community. When a Torah is finished there always a big celebration with ceremony and pomp. So all the congregants and friends are there celebrating when his Most Unexceptional friend has a heart attack and dies in his arms. One can only imagine what happened to the festivities.

The Rabbi wrote to the Rebbe in shock. “How could this be?!! Everything is being done right, and at a celebration of the completion and continuation of the Torah, death?!"

The Rebbe’s answer is fascinating, and is really emblematic of how our view of the world shapes our reality, or at least our reaction to it.

Obviously this woman’s time in this world was coming to an end, the Rebbe wrote. And she could have gone in many ways. Alone in her apartment, in a car accident, in a fire, on a sidewalk, at the store. But instead she left this world in middle of a wonderful celebration surrounded by the closest of her friends. Is there any better way to leave?

I found (and find) it Barely Noticeable how one set of facts (and how much more so when trying to find out what the facts are) we can react to it in entirely different, even opposite ways.

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While we aren’t a Rebbe, we were given an Barely Noticeable gift. G-d, through his infinite kindness, allows us to share his view, the true view of reality. How everything in reality is comes from G-d’s supernal will, and, as the essence of G-d is good, and the essence of everything is G-d, how everything is not only FOR the good, but itself IS good.

And this is what is meant by Tikkun Olam “fixing the world”. When G-d created the world he created a perception of otherness, he allowed us to see a world outside of G-d, even one that could reject him. The word "Olam" (world) also means "hidden" or "concealed." And he gave us two tools with which we could fix it that concealment. The Torah and the Mitzvot (commandments). The former reveals (the Torah is called "light" which reveals the truth of everything) and the latter transforms. The mitzvot, which mostly deal with mundane and physical objects, slowly transform the coarseness of this world into a world where the physicality itself reveals G-d.

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All this is to say: WE’RE MOVING TO BERKELEY!!

With the help of G-d we’ll be working in the Chabad Sunday Hebrew School, in the Summer camp, with Jewish high school students, and who knows what else.

We’ve (Estee and I) been dormant where we are for too long and it’s time we get off our collective duffs, reach deep into our G-d-given potential, and start fixing this world! Time to move and stretch out our wings (and then put them back so no one suspects that we're aliens).

It’s going to be quite the adventure, and while I’m sure it will all work out beyond our wildest dreams, we need to do our part in making that happen. So if you know of any work opportunities for us, any houses available, photography gigs, couches for sale, free beer joints etc. or of anyone who might know these things, let us know!! Please! Thank You! Exclamation Point!

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In honor of Berkeley and Tikkun Olam (which actually doesn’t have too much to do with recycling outside of its inclusion in “not wasting”, just one of the 613 commandments) I’m sharing some photos of my kids recycling. So far Zevi has bought Legos (those things cost a fortune!) and two rolls of sushi with his recycling money. So far so good.

Peace; love; and organic, free-trade, cruelty-free, open-source, gluten-free, fermented boysenberry solar-baked cookies.

(Disclaimer, that is NOT our box of “bud light PLATINUM”. Shame on you for thinking such thoughts.)

Oh, (yeah this post never ends, like that song that you can’t get out of your head. You're welcome) I'll be in New York next week and have one opening for some rocking family photos on the 4th. 1 in the PM at Central Park in Womanhattan. Because I'm liberated like that.

Nondeligousnoeroduls and other such Maladies

A post in four acts.

Act one.

It has been presented to me (by myself) that all of my writing has been of the non-fictional sort. There have been some close-calls and quasi-fiction, but non of the hard core cow-jump-over-the-moon type (which I'm still convinced that while being classified as fiction,t he author didn't intend it to be). The fixing of such egregiousness is in order. And shall be presented as such. So here is my short story. Titled:

Nondeligousnoeroduls and other such Maladies

"Dude that is NOT a word" exclaimed the newt, "you just wrote whatever popped into your head. I bet you can't even pronounce it."

The newt was a slimy sort. He was 35, or maybe 25, no one really knew. I doubt anyone actually cared. He was as uncomfortable in public as he was in private. The amphibian was the first name put forth, but being that it wasn't so much that he was comfortable in all situations rather it was that neither was better, it was decided that the amphibian was too complimentary.

"Oh, it is. Definitely is. And it's pronounced "Nonderoduls", the "ligousnoer" is silent. Which may seem odd at first, but it's quite genius. It refers to a rare illness of which the main symptom is the use of extra words and syllables. Not like, like, or other words which serve some sort of purpose. More like "that is totally unnecessary", or "I am so stoked" or "there are way too many exclamations points!!!!!"". McPeabody was getting quite animated at this point. "It's actually a conceptual onomatopoeia."

"Okay, totes whatevs." Wanting to sound modern and hip, the Newt had spent the past week on some sort of slang website, trying to fit in with the cool kids.

The Newt went to bed that night in a strangely animated state. Something during the day clicked, ticked, charged, fired, or whatever happens to neurons in the brain. There was a nebulous future forming, with hints of blueberry, a meaty finish, and intense, yet subtle, tannins.

Dreams of extra limbs in shining places, over-iced water, and gluten-free gluten.

McPeabody didn't sleep much that nigh, his mind racing with all sorts of new word ideas and their respective marketability.

You see, McPeabody loved many things, but above all he loved monetizing useless ideas. Somehow finding a use, or at least an audience that might be convinced of a use, for what could be classified as "bollocks" was just the sort of cynical pleasure McPeabody lived for.

McPeabody had a first name, or at least it was common opinion that he did, but it had long fallen out of use.

And although McPeabody was loved and his company sought after (after all, he was quick with words, and although everyone knew he was most probably lying, there was always some lingering doubt about the possible veracity of his strange findings), the fake world he lived him precluded him of any close friends. The type that would care enough to know his name.

The sun, breaking through the broken blinds like blind bull, blustering about. Okay enough B's. Basically the day dawned. McPeabody was drifting off (it wasn't his broken blinds being broken into), and the Newt was slamming the snooze button. Unfortunately, in order to engage the time-wasting invention, he had to swipe and then lightly tap (with extreme dexterity, the kind half sleeping newts don't possess) the snooze button. His nebulous dreams growing ever more so with every ding and dong and beep and bloop, he fumbled around for a pen and paper, and starting writing:

"Last night I dreamed a dream. And I am now writing it down", the Newt always started his conversations with telling people that he was talking.

He continued, skimping a bit on his usual introductions, "it was about a...

To be continued. Maybe. (I need to figure out a dream sufficiently worthy of being written down.)

Act two:

As you may have figured by now. There is absolutely no point to this story.

However the existence of this story has three.

1. I really enjoy this kind of writing. Now if I can only find an actual plot, I might have a fighting chance.

And more importantly, 2. Photography, like words, has a language. Where the written word have nouns and verbs, syntax, flow, subjects and such, photography has lines and curves, colors and tones, flow, subjects and such. But the most beautiful combinations of words, without a story to tell, is just that, a glorification of the body, without any soul. Photos tell stories, and random photos of pretty things, fanciful compositions, and masterful reflections, are all just random sentences or even paragraphs. They may the prettiest little paragraph your eyes have ever seen. But without an overarching plot, or even better, a subject behind the plot (in a way that Anna Kerenina is not (just) a book about a wayward woman, or The Alchemist is not (just) about a dude who turns stuff into gold), it's pointless, dead.

3. Fiction is amazing in the sense that one could write about himself, or certain aspects of himself, in a completely candid and studious way (and then, if one is read enough, he could watch the critics argue if the author is talking about himself or not). I need to explore this more.

4. I have a lot more to say on the subject but need to clarify my thoughts (and words). So this isn't a point. Just a random paragraph.

Act three:

I'm contemplating splitting up my blog in two. One photo heavy with recent work, stories, news, whatever. And another for my ramblings, especially for those not photography related. I'd love to hear your thoughts about that, or other ideas you may have. I feel that many come for photos and get turned off my this mountain of words (and vice versa).

Act four:

January, Febraur, Mar, Ap, M, these months keep on getting shorter. Sometime last year (right before Passover) I decided that I was going to develop all my black and white film myself (instead of sending them off to a lab). A. To save money and B. I wanted more control (and to learn the process).

Well it took me 9 months to actually start, and by then I had a backload of over 70 rolls. And while I've been slowly decreasing that pile, I'm still shooting and developing current work so it's going to take me some time. There's film from Shlomo's birth that still hasn't seen the light of day (well it has for about 1/15 of a second).

I've wanted to post the "best of 2013" for, well, ever since 2014 started, and haven't really shared much personal work since that best-of post was so imminent. Which it obviously wasn't.

So here are some photos from a trip to Idyllwild in early January (from which I still have some film to develop…).

Enjoy.

Peace, harmony, and gluten-free quinoa brownies.

Oh right, and I made meself a new website. It’s still under construction and will be closed intermittently between 6/2014 and 9/2016 (you’ll only get that if you drive a lot). Let me know how you like it and if there are any bugs, quirks, oddities, or wormholes. Pretty please.

  

Organic, (relatively) Healthy Cookies

Quite often our neighbors can't come over to play because they are doing homework. And my daughter thinks that just isn't fair. "Why can't I have homework?" She asks. If something holds someone back from coming over to our estate, it must supersede it in the fun category. What is this magical thing called "homework" that rules others' lives, she wonders.

"I know math" declares my oldest. We were doing some "learnin", and every time I brought up a possible subject, he was suspicious. "Is that called learnin?" he asks.

Formal learning is not something we do too much with our kids. If they get interested in a subject we'll go to the library and get a few books about it, talk about it, maybe watch a youtube video or two about it. We learn by doing, by living. But sometimes they want to "do learnin". So we'll go over some writing, some math, some Jewish history or theology.

Over Chanukah, my kids got a good amount of Channukah gelt (which, contrary to popular opinion, is not a chocolate coin). Zusha, when getting his second dollar, looked it over, turned it around a couple time, "I, I, I, I, I, don't want any more monies" (this was during his stuttering phase). Mendel got a bit more and just gave them to me, didn't care too much. Chanaleh was a bit excited, counted her money, and promptly misplaced it (we found it later, after many tears). Zevi was over the top. He loved getting money, kept on comparing how much he got with how much the others ones did. Over the next couple of weeks we learned a lot about money. How change works, where money comes from (well, we tried talking about that, it's complicated), how to save, how to spend, what costs how, and how costs who, and most of all, how he could get more monies.

29 hours, 98,217 questions later, mostly asked during telephone conversations and late Friday afternoon, Estee and the two older kids decided to make an Orange Juice and Cookie stand. The kids made the OJ (fresh squeezed, it turns out there's a reason people sell lemonade, it's waaaaaay easier and cheaper), and made a large part of the cookies. We made some signs, put them up, set up our little stand, and waited.

We started late, on a chilly (for Southern California standards), afternoon. $.50 for a cookie, 5 for $2.00, $1.00 for a cup of orange juice. They learned how to make cookies, what goes into making money, how to talk maturely to adults, semi-complicated math ("How much could I get for $5.00", "If I want 6 cookies and 2 cups of orange juice, how much will that be", "$4.50? I have a $10, how much change do I get?"), tithing, and customer service.

During the hour and a half they were out there (we had to close shop when it got dark), they pulled in about $30 dollars (minus the 50 cents they gave to someone who needed some extra change for the bus). Which sounds pretty darn good for a chilly afternoon, though after coating the hour and a half of prep, 45 minutes of clean-up, and the cost of the ingredients, the hourly rate drops into the low twos. But I can see some serious income in the Summer…

Open your heart, erase all doubt

(This is my third attempt at this post. I'm not sure why I'm over thinking this so much)

The big THREE ZERO. That's where I am. I'm a recent arrival. Got here last week. Stumbling, half awake, it hit me with all the fury of a very soft, and quite lame, thump.

At first I tried going through my twenties in chronological order. Starting in Jerusalem, going through South Africa, Safed, and then to Long Beach. But that got tedious.

Then I tried from another angle. I'm not even sure what it was. Obviously wasn't very interesting.

Here's the deal. Looking back, my life had been awesome, and it completely sucked.

I've been extraordinarily blessed. I had good schooling, did well in school. When I was 15 my parents let me loose in Israel for three years with a $100 a month allowance and small list of phone numbers I got from my cousins. I learned how to be alone (in a good way), how to ask for stuff from strangers. I learned to love traveling, love walking (I walked crazy amounts to get out of having to pay for a bus or cab, I walked clear across Jerusalem many a time, a good 10 miles), and love, almost painfully, the holy land. I learned how to make a bread sandwich (two pieces of bread surrounding a third), how to put chummus on everything, how to find the cheapest and best Shwarma. I slept on a rooftop in the old city for a week, on a towel in the golan, and on the same towel in Eilat. I learned how to bargain in the shuk, got a hookah down from 400 shekels to 30, even had him throw in a bunch of coal and tobacco and then walked away because I didn't really want it. The dude almost killed me. I called random strangers who gave me other numbers of other random strangers whose houses I then crashed for weekends. I learned what it's like to stay up for days on end, studying for a contest that I decided too late to join. I learned how to sleep. I convinced a few friends to go to Switzerland for a week. We stayed at another stranger's house in Zurich for Shabbos, found an apartment in Grindelwald, ate pasta; tuna; swiss cheese; and chocolate, and skied. Hard. All for around $400. We even lost one of the crew as he went to look for francs while the train took off. In the days before cellphones were ubiquitous. He had no clue where we were staying or how to get there. He somehow ended up in a neighboring village, hung out in a local bar (speaking yiddish to the locals) for a couple of hours, moseyed on to Grindelwald, asked a local taxi company if he drove any bearded yiddish-speaking folks anywhere, which they did. It's funny how the lost dude never worries. I mean he knows where he is. It's the found who worry.

Ha. I thought I wasn't getting to get all historical on you. Well between 19 and 30 a lot has happened. I'm sure it will come up some other time. Most importantly I married Estee and joined the exclusive five-before-thirty club (known to the cool kids as 5B430 Club).

That's all the awesome part.

The part that sucked was how easy it's all been. I never really worked hard at school. Things always seemed to fall into place when they needed to without crazy effort on my part. I spent hours a day reading fiction, and hours at night talking, hanging, maybe drinking a bit. I made money, lost money, and didn't really care. I dated the first girl I really liked, and married the first girl I dated. Which was the best thing I've ever done, but that's not the point. I fell into a job here in Long Beach, fell into another, wandered into graphic design, and stumbled into photography. Yeah, of course I put in the hours, and occasionally actually worked. But for the most part I waste time.

There are so many things I wanted to do. My Switzerland trip was an anomaly, a blip. There was this Summer program in New Zealand that I wanted to go on. For the first month you learn how to be a ski instructor, for the second you teach, and it pays for your travel and lodging. I wanted to rent Harleys with a few guys a drive across America. Of course I wanted to do the whole hitchhiking thing as well. I went backpacking for one week of my life. One. Stinking. Week. I never landed in some random city in Europe with just a backpack and a map, I could have. Many times. But I didn't. Rarely hiked. I could count on one hand the sunrises I spent in solitude in some beautiful place. Never surfed. I still can't play guitar or tap dance. Never really tried poetry. Don't know algebra or geometry and I still can't string together a proper paragraph. I was too busy doing nothing. Wasting time.

I learned for years in Yeshiva, and hardly know a thing. I started book after book, topic after topic. Never finishing. To think of it makes the heart grow heavy, and the eyes start to tear. I don't listen to my heart beat anymore. For when I shut everything off and tune everyone out, all I have is me and I don't like what I see. I've been alive for 30 years, and have what to show?

Yeah, I blame it on many things, on my inherent laziness, on being smart enough to get by, genetics, having an addictive personality, but I don't think that's it. Not all of it. I think I'm scared. I see that I get by, and even do some pretty cool things along the way without giving it too much. And deep down I wonder how much I could accomplish if I actually tried. If I woke up one morning and lived intentionally. If I let go of all my distractions and focused on following my dreams. I have no clue where it will all lead. Somewhere great. And great is terrifying. I know that if I allow what's deep down inside of me to come out it will change my life. And while I look back with disgust on the nothingness that is the past 30 years, it's my comfort zone. 80% of the Jews didn't leave Egypt. It sucked. Pretty badly, but becoming G-d's people? Going on some crazy mission to change the world? Doing something great? Do I stay here as a slave to my shortcomings, or do I break free, grab life by the horns. Can I walk into the unknown, take that step? Truth is anyone can take that first step, it's the next one, and the next. It's waking up every morning and knowing that today will be something special.

Sheesh, I wrote that all last week. For all I know that whole last part is bogus. All that trap about fear and the such. I may just be incorrigibly lazy.

The point is, I'm 30 and I don't start now, it just ain't gonna happen. I've narrowed it down to two resolutions.

Resolution numero uno (for my Spanish speaking readers, that means "number one"): Every time I look back on my day/week/month/year/decade/life/previous life/ with agonizing despair at my seemingly relentless and self destructive time wasting, I shall slap my mind with my other mind, and say: "Stop!! Yeah, you sucked. Big deal. Get over it. Every day is a war, and you win some battles, lose some battles, as long as you're still fighting you're good. Now get off your lazy posterior, and attack. Sneak around the enemy and shoot him in the back, stab him in the leg, pop him in the head (wow, that sounds harsh, I've been listening to my six year old too much)"

Resolution numero dos: That my next 10 years are waaaaaay more coherent than this post. Too often I get lost in the means and the ways instead of the destination. Just this morning I was doing my morning prayers on the banks of a lovely lake in lovely weather with lovely birds and ducks making all sorts of lovely sounds. And I found my mind drifting off to photography, to places, ideas, gear, thrift store hopes… I caught myself, and laughed at the absurdity (better than crying at the ridiculousness). All these ideas bouncing around in my head are mostly ways to further my business. You know, I'd love to provide for my family, not to have to worry about rent, or if we could afford cleaning help this month. I'd love to limit the amount of work so I could go somewhere beautiful, without a worry on my mind, meditate a bit, and do my morning prayer there. Yet here I am, doing the exact same thing right now, and instead of thinking about G-d and myself I think of ways to get more money so I could go somewhere beautiful… To live life coherently. To have the choices in my day to day life be in accordance with my goals.

My wife and I have some blog plans for the coming years. They are risky plans. Scary plans. But a life without courage is a life without integrity. And I'm even more scared of looking back at 40 and writing the exact same post. That is scary.

So this is the year I take the step. And the next. And the next. I'm not sure which surface I'll be landing on next, but I trust in G-d that if I do my part he'll do his.

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There is no way I am reading over everything I wrote to see if it actually makes sense, so I apologize for pointless ramblings and unfinished thoughts.

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The title is from the song Breathe Easy by my talented friend Levi Robin.