Hot Sultry Days

Each summer has its heat waves, contributing to those lazy hazy days of summer.  Parts of America have it much worse than I have experienced in the mid-Atlantic thus far, and of course I've lived through some other sever heat cycles both in the midwest and midAtlantic that generated warnings to those in less than optimal health to seek air conditioned spaces.  While the week has arrived here, the dire warnings come my way from the news media or FB posts by friends in the more severely affected locations.  

Some of my recreation requires modification.  While going to the putting green is enjoyable, maybe even more frequent now that my new synagogue location sits nearby, and the drive in an air conditioned car is pleasant, getting out of the car and walking from the lot to the putting surface may not be.  Don't really want to stand out in the hot sun overcome by humidity casting a fishing rod.  Kept bicycle on my list though I probably won't ride it.  My ventures are mostly around the block so humidity won't matter much.  Serious riding, not a chance.  I still consider my time on a local park bench protected time for me and my mind.  It's duration may become shorter.  Rain pre-empts the outing, heat does not.  And working on my photography skills usually goes better outdoors than indoors.  It can continue.  Garden care will be scaled back, though not eliminated, particularly since the main garden could use some watering tomorrow, perhaps even later today.

My acquired fondness for air conditioning, which I did not have available to me as a youth either at home, car, or school, still leaves me plenty of options for fulfilling activities in My Space, tidying around the house, engaging in some kitchen creations.  And for short bursts, setting the AC aside to enjoy nature, of which our weather remains a vital component.

Quick FB Scan

FB Roulette came up 30 yesterday, a day away, and 31 today, a day to sign on, which I did.  Five messages over about 2.5 days, as shabbos is always an off, none in response to anything I had posted.  Scrolled the posts, dominated by people waving their political arms in the air in some fashion.  One friend visiting Florida with another acquaintance, a few attending local events.  Nothing that really engages me.  I read only stuff with big print, nobody's thoughts or comments about what had been posted.  Zero inclination to contribute anything of my own.  Something of a cyberspace wasteland whose potential has probably crested.

Dangerous Advice

 "Starting from zero can be a gift.

If you don't have much to begin with, you don't have much to lose.

You can be bold when you aren't trying to protect something."  James Clear's weekly 3-2-1 column, June 24, 2021

To be fair, I admire what Mr. Clear transmits from his mind to public awareness.  I read his Atomic Habits, benefiting from the advice in several tangible if not entirely measurable ways.  As a result I subscribe to his 3-2-1 weekly email where he offers three personal statements intended for some combination of motivation and introspection, two insights from others with similar intent, and a question he poses to take away our excuses for slouching where we already find ourselves.

Yet this week's guidance can have some very ugly outcomes when implemented that we see in our daily news reports.  Having something to lose, whether your skin tone entitlements, attacks on your church loyalty, invasion by other who take more than the share you are willing to offer, creates a means not to make the world more just.  But starting from nothing and moving in the quest of something seems to be where the boldness arises to trash a store window to get me that flat screen tv that you want but don't have as a reward for expressing more justifiable outrage.  You can violate a capitol building on that basis if the winning candidate brings you back to ground zero in your own mind.

I think the Rebbe took a better approach to the same situation.  His advice invariably started with some type of statement that the situation you implore him to correct has its elements of being a Gift from God.  It can motivate you to assert yourself, try harder, maybe abandon what you seek in favor of something better, to create an alliance of either those in similar circumstances or those who could change circumstances.  Some advice to his petitioners offered inward focus, but more offered outward focus, changing the world with the talent and tenacity that really are Gifts from God, but in a way that enhances the world.  Boldness has its place, but not at a price of causing harm.

Sitting on the Park Bench

This spring I've introduced myself to some of the local parks, Talley Day and Bonsall run by the County and Alapocas run by the State.  The are mostly similar with open spaces, picnic tables, playgrounds with modern reasonably safe climbing and swinging options, and benches to sit on conveniently placed by the County, not as convenient by the State.  Each has some uniqueness with Talley Day's dog exercise areas, a small horticultural tour at Alapocas, and a walking or jogging track at Bonsall.  I've practiced photography skills at all three but mostly seek out one of the benches to sit and watch, usually the kids on the playground but occasionally the dogs doing horseplay with each other, or at Bonsall a modest walk to a more remote bench near a usually empty soccer field.  

It has become my down time.  I bring my smart phone but often do not use it.  Occasionally I prepare a thermal mug of coffee, usually bring my camera in a leather pouch attached to my belt, and during planning I brought a worksheet and pen.  But mostly I sit quietly on the bench I have selected where I let my mind wander wherever it wants to go while I breathe air that has not first been cycled through a condenser.  Quiet time with either no distractions or distractions of my own making.

Daily Themes

Today should be a take care of house day, some kitchen, some garden, some bedroom.  Other days are allocated to writing or thinking, particularly as a Medscape submission deadline approaches.  That was yesterday.  Rarely one gets dominated by recreation.  But as I view each morning the array of initiatives committed to paper the night before, they definitely segregate to categories.  With intent or not, one category dominates what I actually do.

A few things remain constant if not entirely inviolable.  I take better care of myself with scheduled exercise, pretty consistent sleep times, virtually full compliance with daily medicine, and periodic measurements of waist, weight, and blood pressure.  None take very long other than sleeping so hardly any days really have self-care as a dominant feature other than those that have a medical or procedural appointment of some type.  Recreation, mental advancement, and home maintenance always appear on the daily list but don't have the firm appointment features of exercise, sleep, or medication so they are less consistently performed.  Yet at the end of each day when I review and compile the following day's initiatives, one of the three broad categories invariably dominates.  Work on the house today, not ignore my intellect or psyche, and sneak in a little Me Time too. 

DNC Training

Along with about 1300 other Democratic volunteers from all but three of the territories in which they have a presence, I attended my first training session, conducted by two personable and competent young ladies.  They spoke about organization building, how to be welcoming, how to solicit volunteers effectively, how to convey a message though creating good content for that message must come in one of the later sessions.  These are really basic principles of organizational structure that apply to successful places and places like my synagogue where they probably understand them better than they implement them.  I'm not yet convinced that the Democrats implement them optimally either, but every encounter I have had there has been cordial and then some.  When you address an audience of that size, people there based more on good intentions than on personal intellect, you have to reduce the message primarily to bullet points, which they did well.  

Some of what they recommend runs contrary to how I personally receive messages.  Don't take no for an answer or get the recipient to commit upends my default to let me think about it and decide later.  They recommend not having a later option, which I'm sure will deflect people like me who need just that.  I wonder how much science or experimentation really justifies the things they recommend.  More likely these are implemented, the election occurs, and the mavens tease out the results of what went well and how to tweak what did not.

It's a fairly intensive mini-course, two nights a week for three weeks.  Kind of fun to follow along.

My Next Initiatives

With still just over a week to go in the current half year, the interval that I work towards, some reckoning pushed me in a few different directions for the upcoming six months.  Only one of my projects reached completion without prospect for renewal, to be replaced with a more adventurous path.  Some of my projects have proceeded and will proceed along their current trajectory but not be renewed as SMART goals for the upcoming cycle.  And some will just be maintained because they are worth ongoing effort.

All twelve are now articulated, committed to writing, and placed in the pocket of the planning pouch where I keep my lists, paper, and multicolored pens.  I'm eager to start, but not so eager as to begin before the designated July 1 start date.  It's been one of my more accomplished six month cycles. 

Slight Emotional Crash

First cup of coffee has not yet had its predictable CNS effect but I'm optimistic that this mornings starting point will reverse so I can have the productive day at my keyboard that dominates today's daily plan.  I don't think I'm descending from a sugar high, though the Father's Day cheesecake was good and a few fistfuls of sugary cereal as an after dinner snack probably didn't help.  As I look at today's tasks there are more I get to than I have to's.  No interpersonal activities of significance on today's agenda.  FB Roulette came up 36 which keeps me separated from Social Media today.  It's a treadmill recovery day.  Some household chores, none onerous.

Should feel more motivated than I do, but there's still time for coffee to have the effect that makes it so popular. 

Unentitled Father's Day

The Gays get a Pride Month.  Mothers, Fathers, Doctors, and those who Labor get a day.  Up at the specified time for this year's Father's Day.  No real indulgences planned, but I should get a long overdue haircut, if not today, then this week.  It's a treadmill day by calendar.  It's a FB off day by electronic roulette.  And its a do fleishig dishes day because Sundays follow fleishig shabbos dinners.  Don't really feel a need for unique, designated activities or any real or contrived elevation of status.  I'm hardly deprived of opportunities to pursue what I like, though perhaps sometimes deprived of motivation to pursue what I should.  

The calendar usually puts Father's Day at the penultimate weekly planning day for the half-calendar, so my next six months of initiatives as SMART goals get committed to paper.  I did a little better this past semi-annual bloc than most.  Father's Day doesn't change that.  It's more a calendar demarcation point than an indulgent one, as it should be.

Perking Up to Settle Down

Coffee at my side.  FB Roulette 18 making this an avoid day.  Oil level in car adequate for travel.  Just a bit damp out but not soaked.  And I'm feeling better, almost at baseline.  All systems look OK for a day at the beach, most likely Cape Henlopen which offers me a fishing option.  Rod in car too.

There's loneliness, which I have, something that stings a bit.  And there's solitude, which I also have, something welcome, though maybe too abundant of late.  Fishing from a pier with other anglers or challenging some UVB light to penetrate sunscreen puts me in something of a pseudocommunity with others who want the same things but don't interact.  And then there's the synagogue which is a real community that interacts but stagnates when it does.  Neither is really vibrant, each has some beneficial purpose.  And then there's FB and Twitter, designed for interactions ranging from rapport to provocation. Best to leave Tw aside and FB entry random, like I've done.

Challenging couple of days from physical and to a lesser extent emotional strains, coming under better perspective.  Finish coffee, do some loose ends, leave for beach mid-morning.

Arising Too Early

Challenging day yesterday, both physical impediments and some emotional strain with my synagogue as it reopens and perks along without me.  Do I want to return as they reopen?  Not yet.  Do I want to defect  someplace else?  Probably not, though not entirely off the table.  It's been an unfavorable experience of a few years in duration, the extent unmasked perhaps by the forced separation of Covid.  So dizziness, dyspnea, and rumination all converge with the hope that REM will sort them out.  It hasn't.

My two sleep trackers interpret two very different nights for me, but the iTouch wristwatch sleep monitor seems almost fiction while the smart phone app matches my own assessment pretty closely, though it really cannot identify REM.  Rare difficulty falling asleep, which I attribute to some rehashing displeasure with the shul.  Once asleep, the pattern remained of waking at about two sleep cycles, dozing off for another two.  I woke partially refreshed about an hour before my wrist alarm setting.  I got up, did dental care, did weekly weight measurement, went to kitchen and made coffee.

Ordinarily, I make an effort to stay in bed until the wrist vibration so that there would be a clear demarcation between sleep time and activity time, but this morning I just proceeded ahead.  FB Roulette landed at 36, an even day without FB which makes me optimistic about what might be accomplished providing I tolerate my time on the treadmill this morning a lot better than I tolerated my venture to the garden yesterday afternoon.  And the synagogue really needs to be set aside until its annual meeting in two days when I can decide whether to impose some abrasive candor. 

Wobbly

At my cardiology visit a few days back, the NP recommended adding a minimal hctz dose to tweak my BP which had drifted up to borderline.  It's probably what I would have done as well so I picked up the prescription.  My lisinopril and amlodipine being set out in a weekly white plastic case for evening use, I continued that but took the hctz in the morning.  Since it makes more sense to take all the antihypertensives together, I omitted last night's dose and for the first time consolidated all three medicines to the morning, keeping the statin, SSRI, and PPI in the evening where they need to be.

It's been a troublesome first day.  I made it through Shop-Rite without difficulty but in the afternoon started having orthostatic symptoms, including a minor fall for which I groped for my desk chair.  After recovery, my smart watch recorded my pulse at 93 with baseline in the 60's or low 70s.  Later I got dizzy again in the living room, recovered and recorded my BP which was lower than usual but not really in orthostatic range while sitting and symptom free.  

My outdoor project being to stake the four tomato plants in the backyard.  It did not go well at all.  I felt wobbly carrying the four plastic stakes to the garden bed, the short of breath as I planted each stake and bent down to apply a plastic bag tie to each tomato stem.  Afterwards the dyspnea got worse and my sternal area didn't feel right.  I could not advance more than three steps at a time before having to catch my breath again.  I considered an ER visit but opted to rest a bit instead.  My smartwatch pulse has settled at about 80, still above average, but breathing has recovered.  I do not feel lightheaded anymore.

My guess is that the BP medicines may do better at PM except for the hctz but I'll give it another go.  And any more dyspnea with just a few steps will get some medical attention, if only an Patient Portal note to the NP Cardiologist.

Renewing Subscriptions

Two semi-annual cycles ago, or one year in personal planning time, our pandemic isolation had become firmly established and indefinite.  At the time I committed myself to subscribing to two publications, one Jewish, one intellectual, selecting The Forward and The Atlantic, respectively.  Then Curiosity Stream offered a bargain annual fee for the first year so I got that too.  And my New England Journal of Medicine has been a staple for decades, keeping me in the loop of medical retirement and providing simple but valuable CME for biennial license renewal.  They all come up for renewal shortly, with only the NEJM being notably expensive.  I expect to extend all four, though none are no longer within my twelve semi-annual initiatives.

So as to get value for my purchase, and a boost to my mental engagement, I set usage goals for each.  NEJM two articles a week, which I have maintained, maybe a little more on occasion.  Atlantic one a day.  This has been more difficult to sustain as many articles are rather involved, taking more than a day to just read and move ahead.  But I do scan the titles daily except shabbos and more often than not select one to read, mostly reading it by the next day.  The Forward has been a little more problematic.  I like having Jewish news well written.  They had a readers comments option, recently suspended largely for abuse by the readers which posed a monitoring burden for the newspaper.  I assigned myself two articles and one comment a day, usually one from the News category and the other from Opinion.  Not all days included something I wanted to read but most did, and as a newspaper, the articles rarely took more than a few minutes to read any one of them.  I did not detect an editorial bias, either politically, Israel focused, or of subsects within Judaism, unlike the NEJM and Atlantic which made their publication's place obvious as sources for the university educated merit elites that America has generated, myself embedded well within them.  The price for being diverse and neutral seems to be a willingness to take a hit from everyone since everyone will object to one or more items that appear there.  That may be why direct reader comments are no more and letters are more likely to comment on specific subjects written by amateurs or agency honchos than responses to particular articles that have appeared.  For all its vagaries, it remains my best connection  with Judaism on a national scale.

Curiosity Stream has offered me the most pleasure.  My goal has been about a half hour a day of documentary, many outstanding, though often not new.  And many come from sources outside America which distinguishes the offerings from Netflix which also has a wide selection of documentary options.  While I like shows about nature and science and maybe history, all in decent supply though not always with new options introduced regularly, I think the popular culture offerings could be expanded.  Of the different platforms, this cost the least, nominal at their promotional rate, not far above nominal without the discount.  It's one of those can't go wrong purchases.

As we open back up to gathering and personal interchange, these forums purchased in part to deal with forced solitude all survive their initial intent.  All engage my mind, which remains the same whether I keep what I think to myself or engage in dialog.  All will be renewed for another year.

Improved Disposition

After dragging a bit, the past few days I've felt inexplicably well.  My daily pattern seems more stable from the awakening of the wrist alarm to a reasonably predictable treadmill time, to that glass of sherry in late afternoon, pills at 7PM, some TV, and finally bedtime with it's ongoing overnight awakening.  I don't feel nearly as tired.  Nor do I feel driven to do specific tasks but I still get more than average done.  What I would think of as recreation, fishing, drawing, day trips and the like haven't happened but I don't miss them.  Social media has come under the control of a daily spin of Virtual Roulette, settling into the statistical average of about half the time allowed.  Yet even when I am ON, I have much less emotional attachment to FB and don't sign into Twitter at all.  I don't feel either driven, nor do I feel guilty for activity shortfalls, yet I've been productive in a gratifying way.  Nuisance aches have not progressed beyond nuisance.  Completion of a set time and intensity on the treadmill takes effort but offers satisfaction at the conclusion, as well as perhaps some well-being that reflects the regularity of age-appropriate exercise extended over more than a year.

My mood has improved, likely attributable to resuming a citalopram tablet each evening.  I'm less frazzled though still remain resolute when I should be.  And perhaps I'm friendlier and more personable, almost like Peter Kramer's description of treated patients in his Listening to Prozac, now thirty years after publication.  

As I focus more on what I might prioritize for the second half of this calendar year, I have no recollection of past moods during planning months and how they might have affected choices.  This time I seem to be pretty mellow.

Returned as a Donor

It's been a tough couple of months in Blood Bank of Delmarva exile.  My Hb dropped below their 13 g/dl threshold two months ago, far enough under to not be borderline and confirmed by the lab.  Search for blood loss via stool testing and colonoscopy was unrevealing.  My eGFR had dropped gradually to 55 which assigns me CKD 3a but, which the gastroenterologist attributes the minor anemia, though I think the creatinine has been stable a while and the reduction seemed a little precipitous since the Hb measured 13.5 when I had my appendix out a year and a half earlier and had been rather stable at just about 13 on blood bank screening as recently as a couple of months earlier.  Sit tight two months.  Repeat Hb 12.9 which restores me to recent baseline.  Back to the Blood Bank to give more platelets.  I passed, with the desktop Hb at 14.0, which is probably just as wrong as the low ones, but an uneventful extraction of blood with return of the RBCs.  Thought they were having a cap promotion for donors, but nobody offered me a Kewpie doll of any type.  What I wanted I got, some reassurance that health decline was not inexorable and the ability to be useful to somebody I didn't know without any expectation  of anything in return.  

Summertime 2021

And the living is easy.  Or maybe not that easy.  Sweltering days have arrived, though to my surprise the container plantings with commercial potting soil have all retained their moisture from the last deluge a few  days back.  I've not checked the backyard square foot garden.  Deck plants appear healthy even though their soil has dried.  Maybe try staking the four tomato plants later.

Summer marks fewer appointments.  One doctor's visit later in the week.  Maybe see if the Blood Bank will have me back as a donor.  No OLLI classes.  No looming deadlines.  In that sense, the living is easy though better not to be too easy.

Post-Covid travel has begun to open.  I went to the Delaware beaches twice amid prudent restrictions, plan to do this again in the more open environment.  Maybe go to Lancaster after my medical appointment, as I've not done that at all during the pandemic.

Significant blocks of unstructured times also create opportunities.  My traditional six month cycle reaches its conclusion soon, more successful than most given the pandemic's limitations, but still with enough loose ends to require some element of self-directed effort within some specific self-assigned work times.  Still another kg to go on my weight goal.  Still sitting on three completed essays of good quality but lackadaisical about seeking a publication for submission.  Not exactly summertime activities but still on the not yet completed list.  Too soon to harvest my gardens.  I've had a little too much medical care of late.  Complete this appointment and steer clear of providers the remainder of the summer.  And shul reopens but for now without me.  

Since my initiatives get created in June to transition in July, summer for me is never really hazy or lazy.  I have made peace with what I did, didn't do, or could have done, thought about what I'd like to continue or do instead, and come the hottest days with the least fixed structure, immerse myself onward.

Kitchen Surfaces

With Ezrat HaShem and some personal commitment, this will be the week that I create fully functional surfaces in my kitchen to make the rest of my kitchen functional.  I have an orderly plan, already started, with multiple zones to be done in sequence.  It makes sense this time to follow classic decluttering principles, handling each object not more than once if possible.  Boxes for Put Away, Throw Away, Recycle, Give Away, It Goes Someplace Else should make this more straightforward.  Interestingly, as I create zones, only four require a lot of decisions on placement of excess objects.  All will be cleaned.  It's important not to rearrange clutter though, something that has undermined other similar initiatives.  This time do it and do it properly and try to only do it once.

Failures and Shortfalls

My long anticipated colonoscopy did not go well but offered an important insight.  My label of CKD, that I poo-pooed amid a fairly stable top normal creatinine captured more significance by the gastroenterologist who omitted Mg Citrate from my preparation.  My preparation using primarily polyethylene glycol did not fully do the job so she recommended a second procedure in a year.  But since I had a drop in Hemoglobin which banned me from my valuable role as a platelet donor, she concluded that the marginal eGFR over time was responsible for the borderline anemia, as in not really correctable.  She's exceedingly astute which is why I selected her among my physicians.  A more serious post procedure review of CKD 3a, which is what my lab results show, suggests she is right.  The renal function causes no symptoms or proteinuria but has other considerations, from colonoscopy prep to blood donations.

Need to give it a go again next year and need to give platelet donation another try next month.  

Last month saw a return of graduations with distinguished speakers whose remarks reach public media.  They often talk of failure, which is inevitable, and not just for bowel preps and body parts.  There was also my own limited insight to the significance of my lab results.  The colonoscopy screener and wellness screener asked me about falls, which included one.  I failed to control clutter on my own floors.  As much as I wanted to visit my kids this half-year, that won't happen, nor did my anticipated tour of the Everglades as an initiative the previous semi-annual cycle.  I haven't rescheduled either.

I wrote the things I wanted but stumbled on submitting them.  My weight improved with effort but my strength and stamina did not.  My Great Course turned out not as understandable as anticipated.  My social security monthly calculation fell short of what I had expected by enough to keep my travel or donations less.  No shortage of recent shortfalls, though probably no different than any six month cycle or any portion of my life, which had the success of reaching threescore and ten.

Here's where the college speakers, all of whom had their down moments, vary in their advice.  They agree not to wallow or claim victimhood.  So do I.  Opinions divide on whether to dust yourself off and try again, or dust yourself off and move on.  I cannot reverse my eGFR, nor restore my hemoglobin to blood bank acceptability if that creates the anemia.  Platelet donation may be history for me.  Have to move on.  Social Security will provide what its employees calculate but eventually my IRAs will need t distribute making donations and travel more postponed than lost.

I know where my kids live and have the means to get there.  Those visits will happen, just later than I had hoped.  And I have a laptop with Word plus a creative mind so expressing myself will still happen.  I just need a better grasp of desired recipients.

As a Stanford commencement speaker who moved from top of the world to sudden pre-mature widow in an instant noted, not everything that happens to us is because of us.  And while feeling low comes with the package, there are other parts of the package unaffected by these particular personal failures.  And for the most part, you can dust yourself off, whether you opt to try again or try something different.

With that context, I will need to assess the last six month's blend of accomplishments and shortfalls while I choose activities for the next six months which will also have tasks fulfilled and others not completed.

Sprouting

This would be the year for a great garden, and maybe it still can be.  With attention to pots at the front door easily accessible for care, layering of soil and nutrients in the backyard beds, nearly daily care to the aerogarden, and not getting too frustrated with chia pot disappointments, real progress emerges.  Planting seeds or placing nursery plants in the soil has its measure of satisfaction.  Weeding and thinning much less so.  But I'm at the weeding and thinning stage.  The pots only needed coriander selected as the healthiest looking of adjacent stems.  In the backyard, though, things appeared more challenging.  While I know where I placed the seeds, having made a good map, some rain or hose watering may have shifted some of the upper soil and the seeds with them.  For early sprouts I am often not sure which are the desired plants, therefore they have to be left alone until the appearance declares itself.  Some such as dill have delicate stems where more than one seedling in a planting hole germinated.  

Census in the backyard thus far:  tomatoes less vigorous growth than hoped but all viable.  Pepper, one schvok plant, replanted new seeds in each of the two allotted squares.  Eggplant not sure.  Bok Choi not sure.  Beans mostly OK.  Arugula too delicate to thin.  Swiss Chard limited sprouting from a usually easy to grow seed, though mine were dated for previous years.  Cucumber looked great.  Weeded and thinned.

Dill thinned with difficulty in hopes of more vigorous sprouts.  Chives needed some big weeds removed.  Marjoram and oregano uncertain.  Sage had a small plant with characteristic leaves right in the center of its square.  All other greenery plucked from that square.  Basil uncertain.  Thyme too delicate to thin. Coriander too delicate to thin.

Benign neglect for another week or so, then reassess.

Eliminating Readers' Comments

Our electronic media has its advantages along with its disadvantages.  Inviting readers to comment, even with a screener to approve what appears often enriches the original thoughts or moves them in a different direction but it can introduce some ugliness too.  Blog formats such as Medscape and KevinMD where my medical articles appear depend on input from specialized and interested readers who share some of the skills and experiences of the original articles.  They are moderated, at least until the responder is known by the editors not to be a troll, and are invariably polite even when expressing disapproval of what was published.

Major forums like CNN or big daily newspapers will get thousands of comments.  Once a critical number is passed, any being read becomes less likely while trolls getting through becomes nearly a certainty so editing may not be very important.

People may not like doctors as a group or their doctor specifically but medical care does not engender hate.  Political news does, perhaps even depends on some of it, religion can, which may be why the Freemasons devoted to brotherhood among members has banned these topics of discussion from their gatherings.

The Forward, the Jewish daily that now only has an electronic version to which I subscribe, sits at the intersection of Jewish identity, American political divisions, and Israel as a frequent flash point.  Many of their news and opinion pieces reflect top notch reporting and analysis, others seem more amateurish.  Irrespective of the individual writers' talents at expression, the subjects stand on their own.  They used to invite reader comments but recently eliminated this forum, even with mandatory approval of a moderator before appearing.  My input had been somewhat frequent, viewed by me as a perk for my annual subscription fee, though I almost never came back the next day to see if their editor approved what I had submitted.  That's probably because I really didn't care.  The purpose of that input was more for me to digest what I thought I had understood of the article or editorial, its implications, maybe possible future directions.  Influencing any other reader was not part of my personal expectation.  And if they eliminate that feature for everyone, it may be they didn't like the readers' feedback, other readers complained, or they frittered too much valuable editors' salaries reviewing the comments.  I don't feel slighted but do think they may have disinvited some readers who valued their own opportunities to contribute.

That feels very different from a temporary tact by David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, and fellow two years ahead of me in college.  He expresses his views on Israel and Anti-Semitism in many forums, including Twitter.  What he did, and apparently reversed, was set criteria of who met his importance standards for offering feedback to what he expressed.  Being a Nobody, I didn't, something I resented enough to Unfollow him for a few weeks in lieu of his more junior staff who would retweet the boss' positions.  Some of us value our place in the community of readers and very much resent being selectively declared Nobodies even when we are.

While I liked commenting on some of what The Forward brings to the Jewish arena of ideas, I don't feel deprived by this editorial decision on their part.  They have a Facebook presence which does not require a subscription fee and where trolls are part of the platform.  And I can always submit a more formal Letter to the Editor.

Creating New Habits

One of the interesting books that I had to wait in a library queue to read has been James Clear's Atomic Habits which explored habit development, its advantages and its impediments.  As I start to select the next dozen projects for the coming half-year, I looked at my daily and weekly task lists to get a better idea of what activities have become entirely ingrained, what get done but not really habitual, and which have defied my efforts or met with resistance.  On Mondays I weigh myself and measure waist circumference, largely without fail, though I do need to schedule these.  Same with checking the oil level of my car on set days twice monthly.  My wake time is set by a wrist vibrator, bedtime by the clock.  My day always begins with dental care, for all practical purposes now habitual.  Treadmill sessions are pretty reliable but need a conscious prod from my conscience.  I take my medicine at suppertime.  Each morning I make coffee, arguably my most truly habitual activity.  Food is off limits from 8PM to 6AM, something done so long and so successfully that it probably makes the grade as a habit.  I check my indoor plants and the containers outside my front door every morning with little prodding.  Dishes in the sink from the night before get washed early each morning.  I retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway and deposit it at the front door for my wife's reading pleasure.  All largely now ingrained activities.  It's hard to say how long it took to create these largely habitual activities, probably longer than the three weeks often cited for habit creation.

Some of my initiatives would have gone better if habitual.  Writing times never got fixed.  Even my contractually obligated monthly submission requires scheduling and fortitude.  OLLI classes remain a defined task more than a habit.  I have been writing three laudable activities at the end of each day so appreciation seems to be on its way to becoming habitual, or at least an evening task that I rank higher than other options.  Thursday review of weekly Parsha commentary happens each week, but more as a scheduled task than an automated activity.  It gets done for all practical purposes 100% of the time.  And alas, no truly recreational activities have become inviolable.

As I embark on my annual June effort to assemble twelve laudable goals for the remainder of the calendar year, I need to recognize that none really go without effort, though most can still take advantage of the many things I now seem to perform without much thought.